republican senator. author of the debt bomb. a bold plan to stop washington from bankrupting america. thank you for being here. good to be with you. you re a conservative guy. what do they say about your attitude against the pledge? it s a nonfactor. just some constructive criticism. i think it s overblown by the press. we agree that the government shouldn t grow. we want the lowest tax rates we can have. we don t want to raise taxes on anybody. simpson bowles had me and senator greg on it. we voted for reforming the tax code which would raise revenues. we had 33 senators vote to eliminate the ethanol blending tax credit. it s overblown. we want to foix the problems in the country.
that was the cbs steve kroft talking to grover back in november. since then incumbent dick lugar faced a primary challenger, his name was richard murdoch. he was one of those republicans that refused to sign the pledge and he endorsed murdoch. last week luger was defeated in the indiana senate primary. he only endorsed him a week before the primary. his no-taxes pledge gets a public relations boost. republicans become more afraid of it. it becomes more powerful. that grover norquist plenlgs says not only can you not raise a tax rate, but even if you close a tax loophole, that money can t go to the deficit. it has to go back into a tax cut or else he will consider that a tax hike. for years and years he was an
primary it is difficult to imagine somebody winning a primary without taking the pledge. that was cbs steve kroft talking to grover back in november. since then dick luger face add primary challenger. his name was richard murdock. he was one of those republicans that refused to sign the pledge and he endorsed murdock. last week luger was defeated. he only endorsed him a week before the primary. his no-taxes pledge gets a public relations boost. republicans become more afraid of it. it becomes more powerful. that pledge says not only can you not raise the tax rate but even if you close a tax loophole, that money can t go to the deficit. it has to go back into a tax cut
i would tell you that eliminating tax credits and tax gimmicks and tax loopholes is eliminating spending, it is not raising taxes. i think this is an important point. the tax code has these things called tax expenditures. they give people money to help buy a house. they give oil companies money. they give money for ethanol, millions of other things. they are bigger than medicare. they are huge. with more than a trillion dollars according to the tax policy center. alan greenspan says he should be considering spending. and donald marone says they should be considered spending do. you consider them spending, or are they just spending disguised as parts of the tax code? i do. one thing that can be hard to figure out given there s been many republicans, almost all of them, who have signed the pledge is, is it just them in a negotiating position? you mentioned behind closed
he is grover norquist. since creating tax reform, for ronald reagan s behalf back in 1985, norquist has been responsible more than anyone else for rewriting the dogma of the republican party. republicans won t raise your taxes. we haven t had a republican vote for a income tax increase since 1990. and this was your doing? i helped, yeah. it began with a simple idea of getting republicans all over the country to sign a note called the taxpayer protection pledge promising their constituents that they would never ever vote for anything that would make their taxes go up. speaker gingrich s tax pledge back in 1998. once they sign the pledge, grover norquist never forgets. the more signatures he s collected, the more his influence has grown. i think to win a republican primary it is difficult to imagine somebody winning a primary without taking the pledge.