Grover Norquist
Grover Norquist
Grover Glenn Norquistis an American political advocate who is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that opposes all tax increases, and a co-founder of the Islamic Free Market Institute. A Republican, he is the primary promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge," a pledge signed by lawmakers who agree to oppose increases in marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses, as well as net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits without a matching reduced tax...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth19 October 1956
CountryUnited States of America
Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.
There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.
Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.
If you raise taxes, it won't reduce the deficit. The other team will simply spend the resources.
If the parties would brand themselves the way Coke and Pepsi and other products do so that you knew what you were buying, it had quality control. I vote for the Republican. He or she will not raise my taxes. I'll buy one. I'll take that one home.
George Bush Sr. played this role in 1990. He raised taxes and was rejected by the party, the base and the electorate.
I run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending.
Republicans want a guy who will portray what he's doing as building on the Bush record.
I tend to think that the more pro-reform candidate will win.
What's hurting the U.S. economy is total government spending. The deficit is an indicator that the government is spending so much money that it can't even get around to stealing all of the money that it wants to spend. But the tip of the iceberg is not what hit the Titanic - it was the 90 percent of the iceberg under water.
Why are people feeling better? Because they have real increases in wealth.
We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.
As long as we're focused on spending, there are only two ways to do that: One is spend less, and Democrats have no solutions for that. Or we have pro-growth policies that make the economy grow so the dead-weight cost of government becomes a smaller percentage of the economy and therefore less expensive.
People who are willing to stick to a strong pro-life position aren't going to be pushed off a strong anti-tax position. For people who like to think in ideologically cohesive ways, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.