Grover Norquist is famous for his efforts to shrink the size of the U.S. government and lower taxes. He was the founder of the group Americans For Tax Reform, which was started in 1985. The group calls itself a taxpayer advocacy group, but its intention is to advocate for tax payers by demanding that taxes never increase at any level of government.
The ATR also pushes the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which it asks all political candidates at the state or federal level to sign. By signing the non-binding document, those candidates promise voters that they will not support any increase in taxes, ever.
Norquist’s supporters say that he has a deep understanding of conservative economic theories. He is supposedly a very smart man.
In spite of that, however, Norquist recently told Time Magazine that he supports Donald Trump for President. He said, in fact, that he feels confident that Trump will be a strong fiscal conservative in the style of Ronald Reagan.
He compared Trump’s tax plan to Reagan’s when he said,
“His tax cut is more aggressive than Reagan’s, but we’re many years past Reagan’s successes. Reagan would be cheerful with his tax cut but this is more aggressive than Reagan’s. Reagan had a skeptical House and Senate in some ways. They pruned it back a little bit. Trump would not face the same challenge. So, yeah, he’s fiscally conservative.”
Time pointed out the fact that Trump’s ideas are not always seen as economically conservative. The Time interviewer asked:
What do you make of the Tax Policy Center finding that Donald Trump’s tax plan would add $9.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years?
In what has become a familiar maneuver for the Republican Party, Norquist used some twisted logic to defend his support of Trump. He said, in part,
“We’ve been growing at 2 percent since the recession ended and the Obama recovery began. The Reagan recovery was 4 percent a year, Obama’s was 2 percent a year. The difference between 4 percent a year and 2 percent a year is $5 trillion more money to the federal government just from growth—more people working. There’d be 13 million more people working today if we’d followed Reagan’s policies instead of Obama’s.”
Norquist also brushed aside the fact that Trump has indicated that he would be willing to borrow money in order to stimulate the economy. This kind of deficit spending is a major sin in the world of the true “fiscal conservative,” but Norquist just said he wasn’t sure exactly what Trump meant.
OK. How about this, though: Donald Trump has so far avoided signing the famous Taxpayer Protection Pledge. He has given his verbal approval to the pledge, says Norquist.
This of course proves that Grover Norquist is far less intelligent than he seems: He is trusting Trump’s word.
Featured image via YouTube Screengrab.
