With time once again running out to avoid $1.2 trillion in automatic
spending cuts, conservative activist Grover Norquist, who invented the
“anti-tax increase” tax pledge embraced by Republicans, tells Newsmax
TV's Steve Malzberg that conservative legislators should allow the cuts
to proceed barring an 11th-hour shift in the president’s negotiating
tactics.
“The president has put exactly nothing on the table with the exception
of sequestration, which is the law of the land,” said Norquist,
appearing Wednesday on “The Steve Malzberg Show” on Newsmax TV in New
York.
“The sequester is going to take effect because Obama has no interest in
managing spending restraint more artfully than the sequester and his
idea of replacing or delaying the sequester is a complete nonstarter,”
said Norquist.
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The Malzberg show is broadcast by Newsmax Media Inc. It will also be
carried live on SiriusXM’s Channel 166 nationwide, and will soon air on
major radio stations. The show can be seen live on Newsmax's website.
On Tuesday, Obama urged Congress to postpone the across-the-board
spending cuts scheduled to begin on March 1 to avoid what he described
as “real and lasting impacts” on U.S. economic growth.
He urged lawmakers to instead act on a smaller package of spending cuts
and changes to the tax code that would increase revenue, such as
limiting tax breaks, to replace part of the $1.2 trillion sequestration.
Norquist dismissed the president’s plea as disingenuous.
“Sequestration is a fine way to cut the budget from Obama’s
overspending,” Norquist asserted. “Now the president hoped that
Republicans were so scared by the idea of nicking the Pentagon’s budget
that when push came to shove — when we came to the time for
sequestration to start — the Republicans would come and beg him, ‘Oh
please, let’s do something other than reduce any military spending at
all.’”
Republican leaders have also said they expect the spending cuts to take
effect, partly because they won’t agree to new revenue measures that
Obama and some other Democrats have said they want.
Norquist believes that sequestration is all but inevitable.
“It will begin. It will last 10 years. It will be good for the economy.
It will be very helpful,” he predicted. “Are there alternative ways to
save that same amount of money? Sure, and I know the Republicans will
put those forward. Do I believe for a moment that the president will
entertain those? No.”
While the cuts will be particularly hard on the military, Norquist said
that Republicans know “better than anyone else” that a lot of money can
be saved at the Pentagon.
“Defense is an important thing for the government to do but it’s
important not to waste money, so budget cuts are a good idea,” he said.
“We need to do them as gracefully and as artfully and as thoughtfully as
possible.”
The Harvard-educated president of Americans for Tax Reform started
soliciting signers to the no-tax-increase pledge from state capitols to
Capitol Hill in 1986 with the passage of the landmark Tax Reform Act.
Norquist acknowledges that there could be a better alternative to sequestration if Democrats would be open to compromise.
“Sequestration is a little bit of a meat-ax approach, which is why
Republicans several times, twice now, passed alternative savings for the
same dollar amount, if you wanted to look at doing it slightly
differently,” observed Norquist. “The Republicans are committed to
saving $1.2 trillion of the president’s overspending over the next 10
years. The Republicans are open to saving it different ways.”
He believes that the president’s focus on tax loopholes is yet another
example of class warfare, but one that would not simply affect wealthy
Americans.
“Your home mortgage — interest on your home mortgage — the state and
local taxes, the property taxes that people deduct from their income,
when they pay their income taxes, charitable contributions,” he
explained. “Those are the big ones. That’s what the president’s talking
about. He’s not talking about corporate jets or something like that.”
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Congress created the automatic cuts in August 2011 as part of an
agreement to raise the U.S. debt ceiling. They were set to begin in
January, though Congress delayed them for two months in a Jan. 1 measure
that let tax rates rise on top earners’ income.
Norquist added that if Democrats want to avoid the automatic cuts, they
should push through an alternative in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
“This is a law that’s passed. You want to alter this law, you write
something down in legislative language. You get 51 or 60 Democrats in
the Senate to vote for it,” admonished Norquist. “Don’t come and talk to
us about essays written — a haiku about what might be. Write it down,
pass it in the Senate, then we could look at it.”
Bloomberg News contributed to this report.
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