Who can forget the stark right-wing framing, once you've heard it.
Mental images, started by Reagan, but promoted and kept alive by Grover Norquist, among others:
"Starve the beast," we say. "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." Cut pay and benefits for government workers, take away their right to bargain collectively, remove their right to arbitration and shrink the size of government until, in Grover Norquist's memorable phrase, we can "drown it in the bathtub."
Government in the cross hairs
By BARRY GOLDMAN - Los Angeles Times, Mar 08, 2011
As stark as those GOP Austerity Rallying Cries are -- it appears their No New Taxes Log-jam, may be about to spring a leak ...
What's this? Republicans in the Congress are "considering" Raising Revenues ???
(Shhhh! Don't tell anyone that "Revenues" means "Taxes" ... we don't want to upset the Grover ...)
Republicans duel over possible tax hikes
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, politico-- 3/8/11
Coburn and Norquist, two of Washington’s most unfailing apostles of starving the government, are locked in a low-grade duel over whether ideological purity on taxes is a realistic position in the face of skyrocketing national debt and growing deficits.
Norquist says it’s simple: No new taxes means no new taxes. Under no circumstances should Congress raise new revenues to solve the problem, he says.
Coburn usually would agree. But when it comes to taming the $14 trillion debt — a challenge Coburn has called “a matter of national survival” — he won’t rule it out.
“I don’t have a bottom line. I’m open to solving our very acute problems,” Coburn said Tuesday, when asked whether he would consider raising taxes.
[...]
“Grover [Norquist] does a tremendous disservice to the American public,” said Bill Hoagland, a former senior aide to GOP Senate leaders who sat on the Bipartisan Policy Center’s debt reduction task force.
[...]
“Grover is Grover,” Chambliss said dismissively, when asked about Norquist’s warnings.
One source said the credibility and influence of Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform, has been damaged by its association with the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal and the K Street Project, a defunct effort under the former Republican majority to purge lobbying shops of Democrats
Poor Grover -- he is really losing his Mojo! (Pal'n around with Felons, can do that, to your rep, eh Grover?)
Grover Norquist just isn't scaring the stuffing out of Deficit-Hawks anymore, like he used to.
It seems there may be "more scary" prospects on the horizon -- like a $14 trillion credit card debt that's coming due -- someday.
THAT "beast" may be enough to make some GOP Congressmen, become "Revenue Raising" believers!
Well -- It's about time!
Let's help them along, when it comes to busting up that "revenue dam" ... shall we?