The big question bedeviling the Capitol Thursday is whether anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist just gave House Republicans the coded signal that they can vote for a bill to reduce deficits and raise the debt limit even if the plan contains new tax revenue.
In an interview with the Washington Post's editorial board, Norquist addressed the question of the Bush tax cuts -- which are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012. "Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase," Norquist said. Would that violate his anti-tax pledge? "We wouldn't hold it that way," he said.
Democrats are latching on to this to press Republicans to back off their insistence that any debt limit package be revenue neutral. At a Capitol press conference Thursday, House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) read the quotes out loud to reporters. "I think Mr. Norquist has made a very important statement that I hope they each take into consideration," Hoyer said, referring to House Republicans.
If this is the blink Democrats hope it is, then maybe Republicans will ease up in the current fight. But there are a few reasons to be skeptical.
First of all, on MSNBC Thursday morning, Norquist issued the following caveat. "Any changes in taxes should be kept separate from the budget deal," he said, referring to the debt limit.
Second, if some or all of the Bush tax cuts expire, it can happen in a relatively passive way. Congress can do nothing, or Republicans can vote to extend the cuts, and President Obama can veto them. The debt limit fight is quite a bit different -- Democrats want to let some of the Bush tax cuts expire, plus raise revenues by eliminating certain tax preferences, offset part of those new revenues with tax cuts elsewhere, but on the whole end up with more money coming into the government than comes in now.
Third, this cuts against just about everything Norquist has said or done throughout the debt limit debate. He picked a big fight with Tom Coburn over the idea that a debt deal could increase federal revenues. He loomed over a Senate effort to end ethanol tax subsidies, arguing that they should be allowed to continue unless the extra revenue was dedicated to tax cuts elsewhere. And he ripped the idea of a revenue-positive debt limit deal to Huffington Post's Sam Stein, "Democrats are saying, 'Hey, here is your salad, do you want anchovies? Do you want shards of glass?... No, no shards of glass.' 'How about half the amount of shards of glass?' 'No, no shards of glass.' 'How about a sprinkling of shards?' 'No, no freaking shards of glass. We are making a salad here.'"
So it's not really clear that Norquist would keep quiet if a debt limit deal included a provision extending most, but not all, of the Bush tax cuts. And it's also not clear if House Republicans would accept it, even with his tacit approval. We'll try to answer these questions for you today.
Watch the video of Norquist's MSNBC appearance:
Well, so much for that.
Grover Norquist has walked back his claim to the Washington Post that allowing Bush-era tax cuts to expire would not count as a tax increase, and now the Speaker of the House suggests Grover's views are neither here nor there -- he opposes letting even some of the Bush tax cuts to expire.
"I believe that would be raising taxes," John Boehner (R-OH) told reporters at his weekly Capitol press briefing.
So that's not going to happen. "I've never voted to raise taxes, and I don't intend to," Boehner said.
In an official statement, Grover echoed Boehner. "[Americans for Tax Reform] opposes all tax increases on the American people," he said.
Any failure to extend or make permanent the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, in whole or in part, would clearly increase taxes on the American people. In addition, the failure to extend the AMT patch would increase taxes. The outlines of the plans are deliberately hazy, but it appears that both Obama's Simpson-Bowles commission proposal and the Gang-of-Six proposal dramatically increase taxes on the American people. It is a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to trade temporary tax reductions for permanent tax hikes.And this is precisely what you'd expect of course -- the Republican party isn't going to break with decades of orthodoxy because of a few blase statements to reporters. Which is why there was always reason to doubt the significance of Norquist op-ed. But that still leaves open the question of, well, how exactly we avoid a debt default?
No comments:
Post a Comment