This guy is cool with ending the
Bush tax cuts? Are you kidding?!?
(Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Washington Post editorial board:
WITH A HANDFUL of exceptions, every Republican member of Congress has signed a pledge against increasing taxes. Would allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire as scheduled in 2012 violate this vow? We posed this question to Grover Norquist, its author and enforcer, and his answer was both surprising and encouraging: No.
In other words, according to Mr. Norquist’s interpretation of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, lawmakers have the technical leeway to bring in as much as $4 trillion in new tax revenue — the cost of extending President George W. Bush’s tax cuts for another decade — without being accused of breaking their promise. “Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase,” Mr. Norquist told us. So it doesn’t violate the pledge? “We wouldn’t hold it that way,” he said.
Of course, letting the tax cuts expire is decidedly not Mr. Norquist’s preference. Indeed, as a matter of policy, he is passionately opposed to a single dime in new tax revenue. But the fact that Mr. Norquist interprets his own pledge to permit such conduct suggests that Republican lawmakers who have been browbeaten into abjuring any tax increase, at any time, for any reason, may not be as boxed in as they believe.
It's really strange to see "serious people" parsing Grover Norquist's utterances as if they had the force of law. It's not like House Republicans are looking for technicalities to free them from the constraints of Norquistian anti-tax orthodoxy. To the extent Grover Norquist rules their world, it's because they choose to allow it. He doesn't have any special authority over them. He hasn't boxed them in. He's convinced them. And in the end, it's more important to watch what House Republicans actually do than it is to parse what they or the asshole allegedly pulling their strings says.
The thrust of The Post's editorial is a giddy exuberance over the "Gang of Six" plan which they hail as raising tax revenue by $1 trillion over the next decade. But the reality is the plan actually avoids specifics on how that revenue will be raised. It's not even clear how much it would raise. According to The Post, Norquist's proclamation frees up the GOP to undertake a "sober reassessment" of the Bush tax cuts. I'll believe it when I see it. And I'm definitely not seeing it now.
8:06 AM PT: Apparently, Norquist disputed the Washington Post's assessment in an MSNBC interview, and said allowing Bush tax cuts to lapse would amount to a tax increase. In other words, no, Grover Norquist is not giving Republicans permission to be sane. Moreover, they don't want it.