In an interview on Fox Business Network’s ‘Fox Business Tonight,’ ATR President Grover Norquist highlighted several troubling aspects of Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. Specifically, he warned of Democrats’ plans to impose drug price controls based on international prices, creating a 95 percent excise tax on manufacturers that do not sell drugs at the government-set price. Additionally, he warned of Democrats’ plan to give the IRS access to the inflows and outflows of virtually every American’s financial accounts.
Norquist also references back to 1966 and other moments in history, when Democrats’ tax-and-spend sprees resulted in major political losses.
Click here to watch the entire interview.
Norquist explains how the proposal to impose a 95 percent excise tax and international reference pricing scheme on American drug manufacturers will ship medical innovation and discovery overseas:
“Sinema, the Senator from Arizona, has said that we just can’t do this massive power grab that the Democrats want on pharmaceuticals. This basically would end American leadership on drugs because we’d tax it so heavily that people who’d want to come up with new drugs for cancer would do it in Switzerland, not in the United States.”
Norquist on the creation of a new financial account reporting regime which would force the disclosure of any business or personal account that exceeds $600, including bank accounts, loan accounts, investment accounts, and third-party payment providers like Venmo and CashApp:
“You will lose your financial privacy, your personal privacy. They want to know what your Venmo is doing, what your PayPal is doing, what your CashApp is doing. They used to say, “We want to know if you’re moving $10,000 or more in cash around.” Then, it turns out they’re really abusing that, even though it sounds sort of reasonable – how many people move around $10,000 in cash? Well, a lot of small businesses do at the end of a week. [The IRS] would just go through people’s lives; they would hold onto their money even if nothing had gone wrong… They’re now talking about, not $10,000, but $600… If you have $600 in your account, they want to know everything there is to know about that account. And they don’t keep secrets very well at the IRS.”
Norquist on the failure of the Great Society and its political ramifications, and how this signals major losses for Democrats across the country if they move forward with their $3.5 trillion blowout:
“They’re looking at 1966, after the Great New Deal was passed – all these ‘wonderful spending programs’ with all the same promises that we’re told now: the government is going to do everything for you. We spent $27 trillion and I’m not sure you can show very much that we accomplished because of the Great Society. But one thing that happened is the Democrats lost dozens and dozens of House members… When the Democrats have overreached on taxes and spending, in 1966 they got slapped heavily, and then Nixon got elected in 1968, same thing happened in 1994, and same thing happened in 2010. There are a lot of Democrats out there who realize they’re being pushed into traffic.”