Grover Norquist, the top anti-tax activist in the Republican Party, has given ABC an answer about whether Republicans can vote for the AIG-bonus tax and still be in accordance with the anti-tax pledge that the vast majority of them have signed with Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform.
The answer: Yes, you can — but only if it includes additional offsetting cuts in taxes or spending, too. Norquist seems to acknowledge here that the AIG tax is itself a kind of spending decrease — the government is taking back money it already spent — but he wants more tax decreases, too.
“If your goal is to recoup the resources that you’ve given people that you hadn’t thought would be spent this way, you can make it not a tax increase simply by having an offsetting tax cut on honest taxpayers,” Norquist explained. “Or you could do the same thing by cutting the amount of money that you were going to give AIG in the next tranche that they’ll demand, so you can have the withdrawal of the resources done in less spending.”
He does get in a nice populist note: “However, I would prefer to raise the money by raising taxes on the idiot Senators and Congressmen who voted to give the money to AIG in the first place.”
