|
This is where I read that Grover Norquist was “outing”
the neocon agenda, getting
blunt or maybe even brazen about it. Broder only mentions the
tax and spend agenda here, only implying what the sociocultural agenda changes
would be. - KWC Tipping the Republicans' Hand? By David S. Broder, Washington
Post, Wednesday, June 18, 2003; Page A25 Without intending to,
Grover G. Norquist has done the Democrats a huge favor. The president of Americans for Tax
Reform and influential presiding officer at a famous weekly strategy session of
conservative organizations honored The Post last week with an op-ed article
modestly headlined "Step-by-Step Tax Reform" [June 9]. In it, Norquist, who
is most noted for pressing candidates at all levels to sign a pledge that they
will never raise taxes, hailed the Bush administration for pushing through a
fresh tax cut in each of the three years it has been in office. It will continue to do so, he said,
because this president -- unlike Ronald Reagan and the elder George Bush -- can
operate with confidence that Republican control of Washington will provide him
eight years to pursue his economic agenda. "This," Norquist explained, "is because the 2002 redistricting gave
Republicans a lock on the House of Representatives until 2012 and the Founding
Fathers gerrymandered the Senate for Republican control.
In the 50-50 election that was 2000, Bush carried 30 states and Al Gore
20. Over time, a reasonably
competent Republican Party will tend to [elect] 60 Republicans in the
Senate. This guarantee of united
Republican government has allowed the Bush administration to work and think
long-term." Norquist is, of
course, assuming Bush will win reelection next year, and nothing in politics is
as certain as he may think. But
this is a plausible scenario, and his description of what Republicans will do
with the opportunity is one that commands attention. He foresees Bush signing into law
measures to abolish both the estate tax (or "death tax," as he calls
it) and the capital gains tax. He also expects to see a statute that will make
all savings accounts tax free.
This is hardly speculative.
Bush already has seen Congress pass a phaseout of estate taxes and a
reduction in capital gains levies.
The tax-free savings idea was floated by the Treasury last winter but
temporarily set aside. With an
increase in corporate deductions for capital investments and an end to the
alternative minimum tax -- designed to catch those who would otherwise shelter
all their income -- Norquist
says the Bush era will eventually produce the conservatives' dream of a
flat-rate income tax. When
janitors and CEOs have to give the same share of their paychecks to Uncle Sam, Norquist foresees voters uniting in a
continuing demand for ever-lower rates -- and no longer will Democrats be able
to advocate tax hikes that target only the top brackets. The
consequence of this
-- not spelled out in his essay but clearly in his mind -- is a massive
rollback in federal revenue and what he regards as a desirable shrinkage of
federal services and benefits. In short, the goal is a system of government wiped clean, on
both the revenue and spending side, of almost a century's accumulation of social programs
designed to provide a safety net beneath the private economy. When I asked Norquist what had prompted
this exercise in candor, he said that when The Post's editorial page invited
him to explain the Bush tax strategy, he saw it as an opportunity to show his fellow conservatives
that "we don't have to try to operate under the radar
screen. We can be very open about our agenda." And the White House reaction? "They didn't
ask me to do it, but they certainly didn't complain about what I did. I have
exchanged several e-mails with Karl Rove since then, and it's never come
up," he said. I told Norquist that his op-ed had been
the subject of many comments -- both favorable and critical -- from people in
an online chat I'd done for washingtonpost.com, and that several Democratic
operatives had discussed it in phone interviews. Did you think you were tipping
off the opposition? I asked.
"No," he said, "I think the smart guys on the left have
known for a long time they are in trouble -- and that we are going to dig out
their whole structure of programs and power." For once Norquist may have underestimated
himself. The amount of talk his essay has engendered makes it clear it was as
much an alarm bell to the Democrats as a rallying cry for the Republicans. A wide variety of Democratic groups are
gearing up for what they describe as "long-term strategies" for their
party's comeback. Norquist clearly
has told them that the Republicans already are well-advanced on such a plan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7630-2003Jun17.html Tony Blair isn’t the only head
of state getting bad reviews by members of the people’s body. A little anger from Capital Hill,
courtesy Sen. Hollings, a fiscal conservative. Is the Bush2 economic agenda
just another matter of not having to fly under the radar screen anymore, as
Grover Norquist has bragged and encouraged, this week publicly? KWC Delusional on the Deficit
By Ernest F. Hollings, Editorial
in the WP, Thursday, June 19, 2003; Page A27 Nobody is paying any attention to the
budget deficit. Last month the
House Budget Committee's Democrats forecast a deficit of nearly $500 billion,
and The Post reported the story on Page A4. Last week the Congressional Budget Office reported that the
deficit would balloon to a record $400 billion-plus, and The Post again buried
the story on A4. Spending trust
funds, such as Social Security, is what keeps the estimate at $400
billion. The actual deficit will
be approximately $600 billion. That's a win for Mitch
Daniels. The goal of the departed
Office of Management and Budget director was to keep any news that could hurt
President Bush's reelection prospects off the front page, and The Post
willingly aided and abetted him.
In fact, when Daniels left two weeks ago to run for governor of Indiana,
he told The Post that the government is "fiscally in fine
shape." Good grief! During his 29-month tenure, he turned a
so-called $5.6 trillion, 10-year budget surplus into a $4 trillion deficit -- a
mere $10 trillion downswing in just two years. If this is good fiscal policy, thank heavens Daniels is gone. Congress is no better
than the press. Republicans, totally in control of this
town, just casually raised the limit on the national debt by a record trillion
dollars so the president could borrow more money to pay for tax cuts. I say casually because the seriousness of
this move was passed over and hardly debated. In The Post, this story wasn't even worthy of A4. It was relegated to A8. Bush and Daniels used to
talk about how they would repay the nation's debt more quickly than any
administration in history. Before
Sept. 11, 2001, the president bragged that his budget reserved $1 trillion for
unforeseen circumstances. Perish
the thought that the war on terrorism, Afghanistan and Iraq cost $1
trillion. Those factors had an impact, but the real
culprit, according to the nonpartisan Concord Coalition, is that this president
has cut $3.12 trillion in revenue since taking office. These are the largest tax cuts in
history, yet the administration claims they have no relationship to the record
deficits reported on Page A4.
Amazingly, he asks for more. The London-based Financial Times, in a front-page lead story, recently
reported the Treasury Department projection that at the present rate, fixing
the deficit would require "the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66
percent across-the-board income tax increase." The
White House deep-sixed the Treasury study. The Post ignored it. Former commerce
secretary Peter Peterson, a lifelong Republican, says that every time this
administration faces a choice, it chooses tax cuts. Between fiscal
responsibility and tax cuts, it picks tax cuts. Between preserving Social
Security and tax cuts, it picks tax cuts.
Between providing necessary funds to fight the war on terrorism and tax
cuts, it picks tax cuts. "Again and again," Peterson says, "they
choose tax cuts." The question: How huge
must the deficit grow for this A4 story to make the front page, and for the
public to scream for relief?
Across the country teachers are being laid off, there are more kids per
classroom, the school year is shorter, and tuition is up at state
colleges. Bus service is being cut
off, volunteers are running park systems, prisoners are being released, and
subsidies for the working poor are being slashed. How much more must we dismantle before the
public cannot stomach this? Will it take a shutdown of all the
national parks? Or the release of
all federal prisoners because we can't afford to guard them? Or will workers need to pay half their
salaries to keep Social Security and Medicare from the chopping block? I dread to think how
bad it has to get before Bush makes some changes. But the Republican leadership in Congress is in
lockstep. They've just passed a
budget calling for a $600
billion deficit each year, every year, for the next 10 years. The writer, a
Democratic senator from South Carolina, has served on the Senate Budget
Committee since its inception in 1974 and was its chairman in 1980-81. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11221-2003Jun18.html?nav=hptoc_eo |
