Tag: americans for tax reform
On Gas Tax Increase, Obama Is Wrong — And (Some) Republicans Are Right

On Gas Tax Increase, Obama Is Wrong — And (Some) Republicans Are Right

It doesn’t happen often, but Washington is now debating an important issue on which the United States Chamber of Commerce, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer, and a growing posse of assorted right-wingers are right – and President Barack Obama is wrong.

Those voices on the right, along with many on the left, are urging consideration of an increase in the federal gasoline tax, sorely needed both to maintain America’s transportation infrastructure and to reduce greenhouse gases. Yet for reasons best known to him alone, the president is resisting that excellent idea.

As every sentient American adult knows, the price of gasoline at the pump has fallen precipitously in recent months. Filling a 20-gallon tank today costs about $30 less than buying the same volume of gas cost last summer. To raise the federal gas tax by 15 cents per gallon would only recoup 10 percent of that consumer bonanza – and would bring tax revenues roughly in line with inflation since the last time an increase passed in 1993.

Since then, of course, America’s roads, bridges, tunnels, and transit systems have continued to decay, without sufficient funding or will to keep them in decent condition. Congressional revulsion at raising taxes, thanks to the mania enforced by Grover Norquist at the misnamed Americans for Tax Reform, has left the Highway Trust Fund on the brink of bankruptcy since last year. A modest gas tax increase would begin to solve the problem, at least for the transportation sector. (The rest of the nation’s infrastructure – everything from airports and dams to state universities, public buildings, and water mains – is falling apart, too, but that will require bigger solutions.)

Were we inclined, as a nation, to consider what we owe both our ancestors and our descendants, Washington would have embarked on a program of national reconstruction years ago, to take advantage of negligible interest rates, an idled labor force, and under-utilized capital. No comparable opportunity to rebuild cheaply and efficiently, while creating the kinds of jobs that support families, has existed since the Great Depression. And much of what we now take (and use) for granted was built in those years, and in the early postwar decades, when public works were widely seen as a public good.

But the ideologues who now dominate our politics under the rubric of “conservative” are not in the business of conserving anything – not our natural resources, not our environment, and certainly not our infrastructure. Their frothing opposition to government and taxation has actively encouraged decay. Today, the radicals represented by the Tea Party and Americans for Prosperity (another misnomer) will seek to block even a very modest gas tax increase, as they are doing on the state level in Iowa – without any plausible proposal for infrastructure repair that everyone knows is essential.

Ask for their alternative solution to financing infrastructure, and the geniuses at the Heritage Foundation, for instance, demand an end to transit spending and a cut in construction wages. Others on the right simply mumble about “reducing waste.” What they don’t propose is a plausible, equitable, sustainable way to rebuild.

These people shouldn’t call themselves the Tea Party. With their strange urge to ruin the transportation systems that made this the strongest country in the world, they’re more like a Termite Party. Termite is also the proper term for Republicans in the House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner brags that he has never, ever voted to increase the gas tax. (After all, it doesn’t fund golf courses or tanning beds.)

The limits to such madness may be on the horizon, however. When a right-wing stalwart like Inhofe – a noted climate denier and stooge of the oil industry – acknowledges that a gas tax increase may be inevitable, then sanity could break out, even on Capitol Hill.

For President Obama to situate himself among irrational opponents of an increase is perplexing. Perhaps if enough Republicans and corporate leaders insist on a gas tax hike, he will abandon that position and join their ranks. And then at last, the “bipartisan” approach he still cherishes, against so much evidence, might produce something of value to this country.

Exclusive: Anti-Tax Crusader Speaks Out Against Default “Experiment”

As president of Americans for Tax Reform, the right-wing activist and lobbyist Grover Norquist defers to nobody in his zeal to slash government spending and cut taxes, no matter the consequences. His organization’s famed “anti-tax pledge” bears the signature of nearly every Republican member of Congress — and all of them evidently fear that he would denounce them for violating its stringent terms.

Yet as the White House, Senate and House leaders struggle to reach agreement on spending and taxes before the August 2 debt limit doomsday, even Norquist appeared to waver — suggesting to the Washington Post editorial board on Tuesday that he wouldn’t attack Congress for letting the Bush tax cuts expire, before following up with strong statement Thursday indicating the opposite.

If Norquist is flipping and flopping, the reason is simple. Unlike the Tea Party Republicans, but much like his supporters in the business community, he is troubled by the potential consequences of an impending and unprecedented default. As Norquist told The National Memo today in an interview:

“I am not an advocate or adherent of the position I have heard some state, that a default would be ‘not a big deal’ or ‘would strengthen the hand of those arguing for limited government.’ I worry that handing the executive branch control over what bills to pay is not a wise move….even when they would have less cash to spend.”

Norquist went on to say that “a ‘shutdown’ or ‘default’ or ‘wobbly walk around the rim of default’ would be, as my mother would say, ‘unhelpful.’ How unhelpful? I don’t know, [and I’m] not real interested in finding out. Let’s experiment on a smaller country.”

Leaving aside his trademark flippancy, Norquist’s concern that a default “experiment” might go badly wrong puts him in direct conflict with Tea Party Republicans — such as Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), now a leading presidential contender — who insist they won’t vote to raise the debt limit and don’t fear the consequences. Clearly, he is concerned by the consequences, as are many business leaders at companies that have donated heavily to Americans for Tax Reform.

At the same time that Norquist acknowledges the dangers of default, he bristles at the notion of tolerating any tax increase on anybody as part of a debt limit deal. He sounds as if he means to hold House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the pledge, even as reports of their negotiations with the White House claim that the Republican leaders are considering a deal that would include revenue increases.

“I support Boehner and McConnell’s stated positions that they want significant, real, enforceable spending restraint and no tax hike in return for a hike in the debt ceiling,” said Norquist. “They are willing to compromise on the size of the spending restraint. Not on the tax hike.” He obliquely warned both leaders that “it is key for the GOP not to be seen putting their fingerprints on a tax hike or phony spending cuts. That would make it difficult to go to unaffiliated voters in 2012 and argue that [Republicans] are the antidote to Obama spending.”

But there is a contradiction in Norquist’s position as well as the positions taken by Boehner and McConnell — if only President Obama were willing to draw it out rather than surrender to his opponents, as news reports suggest he is now preparing to do. Anyone who regards default as perilous to the nation’s economic health and safety, including even the most anti-tax conservatives, should be willing to reach an honest compromise with Democrats to avert that fate.

In a poker game, Norquist’s admission that he worries about default would be considered a “tell” — the involuntary signal of a bluff. Neither he nor the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill want to take the country over the default cliff. But the president doesn’t seem to be able to see past all the huffing and bluffing.

Watch The National Memo’s Editor-in-Chief Discuss The Piece On MSNBC’s Morning Joe On Friday

Republican Tax King Frees Lawmakers To Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Grover Norquist, whose conservative watchdog group Americans for Tax Reform has convinced basically every Republican running for Congress over the last decade to sign a never-raise-any-taxes pledge, told The Washington Post‘s editorial board that, to their (and, I think, the world’s) astonishment, that GOP congressmen who vote to let some or all Bush tax cuts expire would not be in violation of their sacred oath:

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.

Epic news. This makes a deal on the debt ceiling much more plausible, and should cheer progressives who want to see the biggest, most regressive tax cut in U.S. history–and by far the greatest driver of the deficit–fall by the wayside.