Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says he supports the goal of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “contingency plan” to force President Obama to assume nearly all of the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling.
“Obama is playing politics,” Norquist tells National Review Online in an interview. “Republicans need to force him to do what the established press is not doing. He says he’s got a serious proposal. Could we see it written down please?”
McConnell’s plan would require the president to submit, in detail, a list of spending cuts of equal or greater value than the amount of debt increase he is requesting (about $2.5 trillion). “Obama wants to claim to the American people that he’s seriously willing to reduce spending and he’s not seriously taxing everybody and his brother,” Noquist says. “He’s lying. It’s time to end this fiction that he’s negotiating in good faith. They’ve got to force him to put in writing what the hell he thinks he’s doing.”
He blames the “established press” for allowing the president to get away with putting out a horrendous budget earlier this year, and allowing Senate Democrats to get away with having gone more than 800 days without even passing a budget. Members of the media and their Democratic cohorts, he says, have convinced themselves that Republicans will eventually cave and agree to raise taxes, as they did in 1982 and 1990. But they are perilously mistaken. “Most the people around in ’82 and ’90 are dead now!” he exclaims. “That’s a long time ago. Democrats think because MSNBC says we’ve got them on the ropes, that Republicans will fold and raise taxes. They’re nuts.”
The impetus to raise the debt ceiling has been with President Obama all along, Norquist argues, so where is the harm is simply forcing the issue? “He needs to do something to change the game,” says Norquist. “If nothing changes, Republicans win the Senate and keep the House in 2012.”
The key obstacle to deal on the debt limit, he says, is the president’s refusal to view overspending in Washington as a problem that needs fixing. On the contrary, Obama views his increased spending as the “signal accomplishment” of his presidency. “He’s like a kid caught shoplifting in a candy store, and we’re making him empty his pockets on the way out,” says Norquist. “Forcing him to give it all back now is like losing the next election already.”
McConnell’s plan, while it may be a “last resort” option,” is simply a recognition of the fact that significant budgetary changes are all but impossible as long as Obama is in the White House. Norquist says it is extremely important that Republicans don’t let the president off the hook by “putting their fingerprints on his misbehavior” and agreeing to a lousy bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling (particularly one that raises taxes). Doing so would give Obama a huge political victory that is completely undeserved.
“That would be the worst possible thing because the country would be robbed of a choice in 2012,” he says. “We’ve got time through 2012. The important thing is not to go into [the election] with blood on your hands.”
UPDATE: ATR clarifies that Norquist does not “endorse” the McConnell plan (or any specific debt limit plan), merely its objective to “force the president to put his spending plan in writing.”
The GOP just blinked!
What a surprise...
MARCU$
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNorquist is simply repackaging the "spending cuts alone are the only way to reduce the deficit" canard. How would he look if Republicans "violated" their sacred pledge to him (not to the American people) of no new taxes, ever, under any circumstances?
He's giving McConnell cover on a lousy proposal to save his own skin.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusehahaha! even more outrageous. Do Republicans think people are st.pid?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNext time try to loose the elections if you don't want to have any responsibility.
You can try to dress this up anyway you want, but this is a major concession by Republicans.
They are giving up. They are handing the issue to the President with the idea that it will make him "look bad."
He already looks bad to the people that are against him (Republicans). And the Democrats would have months to spin this the other way. "We tried to craft a deal and they walked away!"
No, sorry. Nice try at spinning this. But this is a failure by Republican leadership. Pure and simple.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMy immediate objection is that it seems like Obama would get to decide both what counts as a spending cut and how big the cut actually is. What if Obama decides that he'll cut spending in 2020 or decides that encouraging the use of paperclips instead of staples will save $2 billion? What if he decides that the "spending" that needs to be cut is "spending in the tax code"? Or what if he decides that interest rates are going to fall and so our interest payments will fall thus creating a cut by guessing about next year's rates?
Obama can essentially make up numbers, raise taxes, and call himself a moderate, and all the GOP can do is watch because they'll never get 2/3 in the House or Senate to override a veto. There are 2 ways this works. One, Obama acts honorably and doesn't cheat on the deal. Two, we would have to have enforceable safeguards that would force real cuts in exchange for future raises. The current deal has no realistic safeguards, and even the fanciful ones aren't credibly enforceable. I actually don't think it's possible to design such a system, but even if you could, this isn't it.
McConnell needs to take this back NOW before the Dems jump on it. The House will see through it and refuse to go along. Then we'll be hearing non-stop about how McConnell and Obama crafted a great bi-partisan compromise that was scuttled by the radical Tea Party. We'll end up with nothing but 4 more years of Obama. Thanks McConnell. That's why we call you MINORITY leader.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusewow, 4 liberal trolls in a row ...
thanks for playing ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDorsai,
You're usually not so brief in your comments; could it be you agree with the "troll" comments?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe's the minority leader in the Senate. He can propose something as crazy as...taxing union political activity at the corporate rate or...a progressive surtax on legal fees and it wouldn't mean a thing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuseseems to me they are still negotiating ... and this "proposal" is a Senate "idea" ... the only real action is in the House ... you know the GOP controlled House ...
lets wait and see what the House votes on next week, then we'll see if the GOP has folded ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe quickest way to a balanced budget is to simply LEAVE THE DEBT CEILING IN PLACE. And anyone who says that means "default" is either ignorant or a liar or both.
The best way to deal with this Snydley Whiplash of a president is to simply step back and say "if you don't submit a deal that can pass congress, then the debt ceiling will stay where it is".
Simple. And remember: Peoples opinion today isn't as important as people's opinion next year. Cowards will lose their primary.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe you can explain why Wall Street is starting to panic at the spectre of the Tea Party and the GOP forcing default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, which ensures the USA makes good on debts ALREADY INCURRED (like those between 2003 and 2008 in particular, and between 2001 and 2011 in general)?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou DO know that the Treasury can currently cover interest payments on the debt, right?
With a fraction of the tax receipts we sent them?
And still have almost $2 trillion left?
The markets smell uncertainty. Not default. Did the markets "tank" the last 2 times the debt limit was passed without an increase?
More aptly, did you even know that happened twice in the mid-90s?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat's what I keep telling my wife. The single best way to have more money in our pockets is to STOP PAYING THE CAR PAYMENTS AND THE MORTGAGE. Anyone who says that will result in "foreclosure" is either ignorant or a liar or both.
She just laughs and doesn't listen to me. Damned liberal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou, Christian, are a genius. It's not like the debt crisis in the tiny economy of Greece hasn't sent repeated shockwaves thru the world markets or anything for the last 18 months or so. I suggest that your Republican friends in Congress take your sage advice and see what happens in a couple weeks. Why, this could be the very thing to remake Herbert Hoover's image into the second greatest laughingstock in American history!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseNorquist is correct in that Obama and the Democrats need to 'own' the debt increase and by extension the bankrupting of America. Remember, this is just one battle in a long war. The most important battle in the near term is not the issue of raising the debt-ceiling, it is defeating Obama in 2012 and taking control of both Houses of Congress. As such, it is much better to force Obama's hand by making him produce a plan. Once he produces that Obamination, the GOP can say no thanks and Obama and the Dems can over-ride the GOP and take ownership of another Obamination; the Obamination that will ensure his defeat in 2012.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere are a lot of assertions in this post, but the biggest one would have to be the presumption that anyone CARES about the debt ceiling, outside of DC and a few politically interested online folks such as ourselves.
The vast majority of people I talk to don't even know what it is. Or why it's important.
The idea that Obama is going to go down in flames, for doing something which is regularly done by pretty much every Congress, and that the Republicans regularly did when they were running the show, is farcical.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse“We’ve got time through 2012."
Really? That's what they told Greece not long ago too.
Sorry, but this is not about political positioning ahead of a future election, it's about saving the country.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat's truly fascinating is that after taxes were raised in 82 and 90, the economy recovered and jobs were created so much so that by 2000, there was a huge budget surplus. And no, you can't somehow argue it away--it happened. Government is a partner with business and they need each other to survive which is why it's so odd so many conservatives would seek to strangle government in a bathtub.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Strangling the gov't in the bathtube"???? By doing what? Asking that it return to the size as a proportion of GDP it was in 2000? (and the GOP isn't even asking that...)
What is so hard to understand that borrowing money from China to pay people to not work so they can buy stuff from China and making it impossible for domestic industry to predict what the rules of the game will be over just the next 2 years is not the kind of economic policy that is going to lead to a healthy recovery? Economic policy must be aimed at getting the nation to convert its resources into useful goods and services. Paying people to not work, paying huge portions of your labor market to go to college to earn degrees in useless fields, subsidizing production of alternative energy that results in a net loss of energy while simultaneously burning our food supply and strangling domestic energy production (and even energy production in neighboring friendly countries such as Canada) is asinine yet a perfect description of Obama policy.
What % of GDP should the federal government consume? If your answer is anything greater than 20, how in the hell did the nation survive for all the decades when it was below 20%...what has changed in human nature that makes 25% better and if it is, why is the economy performing so terribly?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReally? GWHB lost the election in 92 cuz of 'it's the economy, stupid'.
The 2000 surplus was strictly cuz the Repubs held Slick Willy's feet to the fire in the mid and late 90's on the budget.
If it was so great and not in a recession the hero of the Gulf War would have kept his 91% approval rate and we never would have had Hillary to kick around.
Go back to nowhere.
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