From NBC’s First Read: “‘Congressional leaders have until Aug. 16 to name the 12 members of the newly created ‘supercommittee’ to deal with reducing the deficit, but special interest groups are wasting no time in pushing their choices for the panel,’ The Hill writes. Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, told First Read in an interview he was confident the committee would not raise taxes, because House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wouldn’t appoint people who would consider revenues. ‘The one thing that committee won't do is raise taxes,’ Norquist deadpanned.”
Peter Roff writes for U.S. News: “The total federal regulatory burden is difficult to calculate, but its effects are readily apparent. Americans for Tax Reform, the protaxpayer group that has for years been trying to quantify it, estimated that, for 2010, the total cost of the federal government consumed 63.41 percent of national income. To put it another way, Americans for Tax Reform pegged ‘Cost of Government Day’ as falling on August 19, meaning that working Americans had to ‘toil 231 days out of the year just to meet all costs imposed by government’—eight days more than in 2009, and more than a month later than in 2008.”