Hey, candidates: Read our lips, no new pledges
You’ve got to hand it to Grover Norquist. He has been remarkably successful at persuading Republican officeholders and candidates to sign his no-tax-increases-ever pledge, which has made him influential in Washington and a key reason why so little has been done to solve the nation’s most vexing financial problems.
Goaded by Norquist, president of the group Americans for Tax Reform, conservatives’ traditional resistance to tax increases has morphed into a quasi-religious, party-defining obsession. The pledge has helped kill any number of reasonable bipartisan plans for controlling the national debt or fixing lesser problems, such as replenishing the nearly bankrupt Highway Trust Fund.
Any doubt about the power of the pledge vanished four years ago in a Fox News debate, when eight candidates for the Republican presidential nomination were asked whether they’d reject a budget deal with $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in new taxes — a fantastically good deal for conservatives. Every hand went up.
Now another presidential campaign is upon us, and candidates continue to be under pressure to sign Norquist’s pledge. Most of the 17 Republican contenders have signed or indicated they will, except for former Florida governor Jeb Bush, former New York governor George Pataki and businessman Donald Trump.
Good for them. Bush, in particular, has been refreshingly contemptuous of the idea. At a congressional hearing three years ago, he said he was a consistent tax cutter but not a pledge signer. “I don’t believe you outsource your principles or convictions,” Bush said.
The issue cuts close to home for Bush because his father was hurt by the infamous “read my lips, no new taxes” promise he made at the 1988 Republican convention. The elder Bush reversed himself in a 1990 budget deal with the Democratic Congress that helped cost him re-election in 1992. But the budget agree- ment, combined with subsequent efforts, paved the way for the only four years of balanced budgets (1998-2001) of the past 45 years.
Inspired by Norquist’s success, other interest groups are trying to get into the pledge game, on issues ranging from gay marriage to global warming.
The billionaire Koch brothers’ political arm, Americans for Prosperity, is insisting candidates sign a promise not to support any climate tax that raises net revenue. Signatories include Republicans Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.
On the opposite side of the climate change debate, The Nation magazine wants candidates to sign a pledge never to take money from oil, gas or coal companies. So far, only Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Democrats Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley have fallen into line.
At least refusing to take fossilfuel money wouldn’t restrict their actions in office. Even so, what most pledges have in common is that they make candidates beholden to interest groups and, once in office, limit their ability to deal with changing circumstances. Compromise is what democracy is all about, especially in a politically divided nation. Candidates who vow never to make a deal, even one that might be in the nation’s best interest, are pledging allegiance to the wrong people.