Politicians had better listen to Norquist. If they don't when they catch up with them, he and his crowd will trample them to death. :>)
Don't Even Think About Raising Taxes
By Grover Norquist
washingtonpost.com
Monday, September 15, 2003; Page A23
The anti-tax-increase consensus now dominant at the national level in the Republican Party was strengthened dramatically at the state level with the defeat of Alabama Gov. Robert R. Riley's proposal to increase taxes by $1.2 billion to pay for existing and new spending programs. The constitutional amendment was voted down 68 percent to 32 percent on Tuesday, with the Alabama Republican Party opposing the Republican governor's tax hike.
This is good news for the taxpayers of Alabama, and it sends a powerful signal to GOP leaders in other states: Rein in spending and don't even think about raising taxes. This is a deepening of a trend within the Republican Party.
Forty years ago Sen. Barry Goldwater voted against John F. Kennedy's 25 percent across-the-board tax cut. Twenty years ago Ronald Reagan followed by cutting the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent but then allowed almost annual smaller increases. But by 1988 Vice President George Bush could win the Republican nomination only when he signed the "taxpayer protection pledge" against tax hikes, a promise Sen. Robert Dole had refused to make. The imperative against tax increases for Republicans was driven home when the first President Bush, who had managed the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberated Kuwait and won 90 percent approval ratings, was defeated by a little-known Arkansas governor solely because he had raised taxes in 1990. Since then no Republican in the House or Senate has voted to raise taxes, and 217 members of the House and 42 senators -- or 95 percent of House Republicans and 80 percent of Senate Republicans -- as well as the Republican president have signed the pledge.
But was that strong consensus confined to the national government? When he endorsed a tax increase in January 2003, Idaho Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne won front-page play in The Post as a possible trendsetter for other Republican governors responding to slow economic growth and lower than hoped-for state and local revenues.
Some Republican governors did raise taxes: in Arkansas, Utah, South Dakota, Ohio, Connecticut and Nevada. And the division between those governors who raised taxes and those who didn't was not a function of the size of their budget shortfalls. The six tax-raising governors had shortfalls among the smallest, but they tended to be term-limited and to have no national aspirations. Taxes were opposed in those states where there were Republican governors who might one day be candidates for the presidency or vice presidency. These included Bill Owens of Colorado, Rick Perry of Texas, Jeb Bush of Florida, Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, Linda Lingle of Hawaii and Craig Benson of New Hampshire. New York suffered a tax increase, but only over the veto of pro-taxpayer Gov. George Pataki.
We know how national voters feel about Republican presidents who raise taxes: They retire them. But at the state level, Alabama was the first opportunity to get a quick voter reaction to tax-hiking governors.
In Alabama, pro-tax increase Republicans lost by more than 2 to 1 despite having every conceivable advantage: The previous overspending was done by a Democratic governor and legislature; the economy was slow, the tax increase was sold through class warfare, with Riley arguing that the poor would pay less while the rich would pay more. Riley went further and claimed, in the heart of the Bible Belt, that Jesus of Nazareth would have liked his "progressive" tax shift. The pro-tax campaign outspent the anti-tax campaign by at least 3 to 1, and business leaders were largely neutralized. Heck, the state's largest business group, the domesticated Business Council of Alabama, contributed $800,000 of their members' money to pass the tax hike.
The California recall election on Oct. 7 will give us further evidence of the power of the tax issue in the general electorate and for Republican candidates. Democratic Gov. Gray Davis probably signed his political death warrant when he tripled the car tax through an executive order. And on the Republican side, Arnold Schwarzenegger is refusing -- as Alabama's Gov. Riley did -- to sign the no-tax-hike pledge, thus leaving the door open to tax hikes in case of an "emergency." This has allowed state Republican Sen. Tom McClintock, with little name recognition or money, to hold onto 10 percent to 15 percent of the vote -- enough to keep Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante ahead in the polls.
The lesson learned at the national level in 1990 and 1992 is now being painfully learned at the state level: A Republican cannot be elected and govern successfully -- that is, in such a way as to make possible reelection or higher office -- without staking out an unequivocal anti-tax-hike position.
The writer is president of Americans for Tax Reform. |
