James Pethokoukis is pleased by the news that Mitt Romney signed the ATR pledge and he reports the following:

Now three sources tell me that Cantor and Boehner are against any net tax revenue increases, whether from higher tax rates or the elimination of tax subsidies.

I believe that we need to curb tax expenditures and apply some the revenue to lowering marginal tax rates and some of it to reducing the deficit. Though I think that long-term spending cuts should take precedence over revenue increases, I’m with Senator Tom Coburn: revenue increases have to be part of the solution.

David Weigel spoke with a conservative in the House who struck me as very sensible:

A little while after Cantor’s announcement, Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., one of the conservatives who won his seat with the help of the Club for Growth, said he’d be willing to vote to eliminate tax breaks even if it violates the wording of Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge.”I respect and admire Grover Norquist,” said Lamborn. “But I’d have to think, looking at the overall debt package, it would satisfy even the strictest tax cutter if we’re cutting spending all over the place.”

Here is the problem. If we don’t compromise on curbing tax breaks, we’ll wind up with marginal tax rate increases, as Weigel suggests:

Yet Democrats have a killer argument for debt reduction that they can’t, or won’t, deploy. Two months ago, a Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 72 percent of Americans favored raising marginal tax rates on people making more than $250,000. Only 21 percent of Americans favored Medicare cuts; 42 percent favored defense cuts. It’s a soft target that is, for some reason, politically impossible to hit.

Like it or not, an overwhelming majority of U.S. voters wanted to raise revenue in the worst possible way. We’d be much better off raising the same amount of revenue in the best possible way, i.e., eliminating tax expenditures, while winning deeper spending cuts.