SALON

Wednesday, Dec 19, 2012 10:50 PM UTC

Grover Norquist breaks his own pledge

Grover Norquist has come out in support of Boehner's "Plan B" after pledging to oppose any and all tax hikes

By

Topics: Grover Norquist, Taxes, Republicans, Fiscal cliff, Editor's Picks,

Grover Norquist breaks his own pledgeGrover Norquist (Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)

Grover Norquist’s tax pledge is pretty straightforward. “I [undersigned] pledge to … oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates,” it reads. So, it was a little surprising to see this afternoon that Norquist has come out in favor of an increase in marginal income tax rates. An official declaration from his Americans for Tax Reform ruled as kosher John Boehner’s so-called Plan B fiscal cliff proposal:

The House this week will vote on a tax bill.  This legislation—popularly known as “Plan B”–permanently prevents a tax increase on families making less than $1 million per year. … Having finally seen actual legislation in writing, ATR is now able to make its determination about a legislative proposal related to the fiscal cliff. ATR will not consider a vote for this measure a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.

You know what else Plan B would do? Hike taxes on Americans making more than $1 million a year, in direct contravention of Norquist’s pledge.

But he gets off on a technicality. See, all the Bush tax cuts will expire on Dec. 31 anyway, so all Boehner’s bill does is extend some of them, while letting the others die. Technically, it “contains no tax increases of any kind,” as ATR’s statement notes. Even though everyone knows exactly what’s going on here — Republicans are preparing to vote, for the first time, for a tax hike — Norquist is looking the other way because he knows Republicans really need him to cut them some slack right now. Plus, he knows it’s not a serious effort, but just a means to pressure Democrats. It shows how Norquist can occasionally bend the rules of his pledge in order to help the GOP out of a jam that he himself helped create.

Almost exactly a year ago, the payroll tax holiday — a popular Democratic-backed program aimed at the middle class — was set to expire. Republicans opposed extending it because they only care about giving tax cuts to the wealthy, so liberals started using Norquist’s pledge against the GOP. Republicans have to support the tax cut extension, Democrats argued; not doing so would violate Norquist’s pledge. Lo, an early Christmas miracle: Norquist blessed letting the payroll tax holiday expire. For basically no reason.

“For the president to run around and say not continuing a temporary tax cut is an increase is inaccurate,” Norquist told the National Journal. He didn’t really elaborate on that because it would be hard to. Plenty of other tax cuts are temporary — the Bush tax cuts that were supposed to last only 10 years, the oil subsidies that have to get renewed every year — yet Norquist supports them.

Which all makes us wonder if 2014′s Republican primary challengers will be more consistent than Norquist and run ads attacking incumbents for hiking taxes.

Continue Reading Close

Alex Seitz-Wald is Salon's political reporter. Email him at aseitz-wald@salon.com, and follow him on Twitter @aseitzwald. More Alex Seitz-Wald.

Next Article

Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

What To Read Awards: Top 10 Books of 2012 slide show

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10
  • 10. "The Guardians" by Sarah Manguso: "Though Sarah Manguso’s 'The Guardians' is specifically about losing a dear friend to suicide, she pries open her intelligent heart to describe our strange, sad modern lives. I think about the small resonating moments of Manguso’s narrative every day." -- M. Rebekah Otto, The Rumpus

  • 9. "Beautiful Ruins" by Jess Walter: "'Beautiful Ruins' leads my list because it's set on the coast of Italy in 1962 and Richard Burton makes an entirely convincing cameo appearance. What more could you want?" -- Maureen Corrigan, NPR's "Fresh Air"

  • 8. "Arcadia" by Lauren Groff: "'Arcadia' captures our painful nostalgia for an idyllic past we never really had." -- Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • 7. "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn: "When a young wife disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary, her husband becomes the automatic suspect in this compulsively readable thriller, which is as rich with sardonic humor and social satire as it is unexpected plot twists." -- Marjorie Kehe, Christian Science Monitor

  • 6. "How Should a Person Be" by Sheila Heti: "There was a reason this book was so talked about, and it’s because Heti has tapped into something great." -- Jason Diamond, Vol. 1 Brooklyn

  • 4. TIE "NW" by Zadie Smith and "Far From the Tree" by Andrew Solomon: "Zadie Smith’s 'NW' is going to enter the canon for the sheer audacity of the book’s project." -- Roxane Gay, New York Times "'Far From the Tree' by Andrew Solomon is, to my mind, a life-changing book, one that's capable of overturning long-standing ideas of identity, family and love." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 3. "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain: "'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' says a lot about where we are today," says Marjorie Kehe of the Christian Science Monitor. "Pretty much the whole point of that novel," adds Time's Lev Grossman.

  • 2. "Bring Up the Bodies" by Hilary Mantel: "Even more accomplished than the preceding novel in this sequence, 'Wolf Hall,' Mantel's new installment in the fictionalized life of Thomas Cromwell -- master secretary and chief fixer to Henry VIII -- is a high-wire act, a feat of novelistic derring-do." -- Laura Miller, Salon

  • 1. "Behind the Beautiful Forevers" by Katherine Boo: "Like the most remarkable literary nonfiction, it reads with the bite of a novel and opens up a corner of the world that most of us know absolutely nothing about. It stuck with me all year." -- Eric Banks, president of the National Book Critics Circle

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 10

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 13 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( profile | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

From Around the Web

Recommendations