Get to know Grover in The Harvard Crimson’s “15 Questions with Grover G. Norquist.” Some highlights: “Bush turned around and spent too much, and Obama turned around and said, ‘All those stupid things Bush is doing, we’re going to do 10 times that much.’ So he did stupid on steroids… I want to drop the government in half over the next 25 years, and then drop it in half again. The government’s about 33 percent of GDP, 33 percent of the economy. We want to take it down to 16 and a half percent, then take it down to eight percent, all of which would take us to where we were at the turn of the century.”
ATR’s own Mattie Corrao is in The Daily Caller proposing a mandated wait period before voting on legislation: “One proposal that is listed in the pledge is a waiting period for legislation, one of the fourteen ways Americans for Tax Reform has suggested the government reduce spending… Putting pending legislation online serves as a warning to policymakers that taxpayers are watching…and reading to see what Congress thinks they can get past the American public.”
In The Wall Street Journal Grover Norquist points out the highs and lows of President Obama’s new tax proposal: “‘The good news is that taxes won’t be increasing on January 1. The bad news is that the uncertainty is simply moved forward two years,’ Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, said in an email to Washington Wire. His group’s website features a ‘Countdown to the Biggest Tax Increase in American History.’ ‘Okay, businessmen and women of America: make long term plans with this uncertainty,’ Mr. Norquist wrote.”
Is putting off the tax debate until 2012 really that smart for Democrats? The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin asks ATR’s tax policy director Ryan Ellis: “To say that Republicans are triumphant would be an understatement. They won the philosophical point (tax hikes impede economic growth) and, candidly, are more than delighted to have a repeat of this debate for the presidential campaign in 2012. Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform, which strenuously pushed for extension of the Bush tax cuts, tells me, ‘If 2012 is a referendum on Obamacare and tax hikes, we win.’ Well, there will be lots of other issues, and 2012 in political terms is a long way off. Still, I see his point.”