Americans are fed up with job-killing tax increases that don’t come with spending cuts and “aren’t falling for that again,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said today on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Twice, the Democrats have said, ‘Let’s raise taxes and cut spending,’ ” Norquist said, referring to the taxes imposed in 1982 and 1990. “We know that, if you raise taxes, the politicians in Washington simply spend it.”
Raising taxes slows the economy and kills jobs, he said.
“We just wasted $8 billion on stimulus spending that added to debt that that killed jobs,” he said. “Tax increases are what politicians do rather than reform government, rather than make tough decisions.”
The 2003 rate reductions on capital-gains taxes led to “four years of strong economic growth” until the Democrats gained control of Congress, he said.
“The Democrats have no interested in tax reform,” he said. “It’s the Democrats whose position is that the only problem in Washington, D.C., is peasants aren’t sending enough cash in cash in for the king to spend.”
Norquist said it’s unlikely that a Republican who does not believe cutting spending and making government smaller would win the Oval Office.
“People say the Republicans say, ‘Don’t raise taxes.’ Correct. But the Democrats . . . they want $1 trillion in tax increases. So who’s being unreasonable?” The guys who want $1 trillion more of your money to waste, or the people who say we’re spending too much of your money now?”
All of the Republican presidential candidates except Jon Huntsman have signed written commitments not to raise Americans’ taxes, he said.
“The American people don’t like people who lie their way into office,” he said. “They do like people who keep their commitments.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.