Super Committee

Obama Issues Veto Threat On Bush Tax Cuts

Brian Beutler | November 22, 2011, 9:40AM

President Barack Obama

President Obama has threatened to veto any legislation that attempts to eliminate the automatic penalties for Super Committee failure. But on January 1, 2013 -- the same day the automatic, across the board spending cuts are scheduled to take effect -- all of the Bush tax cuts are set to expire. And the White House plans to use the threat of full expiration the exact same way they're using the threat of sequestration -- to force Republicans to accept a higher tax burden on wealthy Americans.

"He won't sign a full extension," said one Senior Administration Official at a White House background briefing for reporters on the Super Committee.

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Scott Brown

Massachusetts Dems Press Scott Brown To Abandon Norquist

Brian Beutler | November 21, 2011, 2:53PM

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)

Massachusetts Democrats are using gridlock on the Super Committee as an opening to drive a wedge between Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) and the GOP's leading anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.

"Scott Brown talks the talk on looking for bipartisan compromise, but he doesn't walk the walk," said Massachusetts Democratic Party Chair John Walsh, in a statement provided to TPM. "For Brown, asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share has always been off the table because of his blind allegiance to the Republican Party's agenda. Abandoning Norquist's extremist pledge that protects giveways to Big Oil and other special interests would go a long way toward showing that Scott Brown is serious about taking a balanced approach that asks the wealthiest Americans to share the burden of getting our nation's fiscal house in order instead of dumping it all on senior citizens and the middle class."

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Super Committee

Grover Norquist And The Super Committee -- Who's Really In Charge?

Brian Beutler | November 15, 2011, 4:52PM

Grover Norquist

About a week ago, Republicans on the Super Committee offered Democrats a plan they themselves claimed would raise new tax revenues. Setting aside specifics, Democrats treated it as a crack in the dam -- the first indication the GOP's alliance with anti-tax activists was starting to crumble.

Democrats ultimately rejected it. But so too did Grover Norquist, which suggests it really did violate his pledge (which most Republicans have taken) never to raise effective tax rates. Fast forward to Monday, Norquist told The Hill, "I've talked to the House leadership and the Senate leadership. They're not going to be passing any tax increases.... If Republicans raise taxes now, they don't win the Senate, and if Republicans raise taxes now they might not keep the House."

Logically, this means one of four things:

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Obamacare

How Grover Norquist Anti-Tax Pledge Could Foil GOP's Latest Obamacare Repeal Push

Brian Beutler | November 9, 2011, 3:28PM

Grover Norquist

Here's one example of how Grover Norquist's Taxpayer Protection Pledge boxes in Republican members, even on issues near and dear to the GOP base.

The details here were first reported by Inside Health Policy but it illustrates a point Republicans on the deficit Super Committee are all too familiar with. Starting in 2014, the health care law will automatically start providing tax credits for individual market health care policies -- the subsidies that will help uninsured people buy coverage.

Republicans want to stop the money from going out before it starts, so they've introduced legislation to repeal the subsidies. Except, since these are tax credits and not direct spending, repealing them could count as a tax increase as far as the taxpayer protection pledge is concerned.

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Super Committee

Report: Super Committee GOPers Agree To Violate Norquist Pledge...With A Catch

Brian Beutler | November 7, 2011, 4:12PM

Grover Norquist

Super Committee Republicans are floating a trial balloon that would produce new tax revenue, in apparent contravention of Grover Norquist's taxpayer protection pledge, according to Wall Street Journal editorialist Stephen Moore.

But as Moore explains that the offer has a catch:

One positive development on taxes taking shape is a deal that could include limiting tax deductions, perhaps by capping write-offs on charities, state and local taxes, and mortgage interest payments as a percentage of each tax filer's gross income. That idea was introduced on these pages by Harvard economist Martin Feldstein.

In exchange, Democrats would agree to make the Bush income-tax cuts permanent. This would mean preventing top rates from going to 42% from 35% today, and keeping the capital gains and dividend tax rate at 15%, as opposed to plans to raise them to 23.8% or higher after 2013.

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Grover Norquist

Boehner: Grover Who?!

Brian Beutler | November 3, 2011, 12:04PM

House Speaker John Boehner with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the foreground.

A simple yes or no would have sufficed, but when House Speaker John Boehner was asked whether anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist was a positive influence on his caucus, he feigned ignorance.

"It's not often I'm asked about some random person in America," he said.

The context here is that Republicans are gridlocking the deficit Super Committee because they've pledged publicly never to raise taxes -- a pledge Democrats say they'll have to break to get bipartisan support for cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

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Alan Simpson

Super Committee Republicans Get Earful Over Loyalty To Grover Norquist

Brian Beutler | November 2, 2011, 12:30PM

Grover Norquist

While Super Committee Democrats are pressed to accept unpopular, and illiberal proposals like raising the Medicare eligibility age to 67 over several years, Republicans are under increasing pressure to cut Grover Norquist loose.

The well-funded anti-tax crusader has secured pledges from the vast majority of Republican members of Congress, including all six GOP members of the Super Committee, to never raise taxes on net. And that's the key reason the panel is deadlocked with just three weeks until its deadline.

Yesterday, at a public hearing, those six Republicans got an earful from one of their former colleagues -- retired Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY).

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