As the House considers President Joe Biden’s tax plan that includes a major tax increase, conservatives are leaving little doubt that they would launch an all-out attack on the controversial measure—no matter what the final price tag.
“Even if [Democrats] make concessions on it, it’s still a horrible bill,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), told The Patriot Depot Sunday evening.
Norquist, father of the pledge against raising tax rates and/or imposing new taxes, said his group would shortly unveil a seven-figure independent expenditure warning against raising any taxes.
He added that the seven-figures were “raised already.”
The media broadsides against the levies will be focused on the districts of 30 Democratic House Representatives considered vulnerable in 2022.
“And remember, we only have to convince five of them to break party ranks and vote against the final bill,” he said, noting the 220-212 majority – with three seats vacant – that Democrats hold in the House.
Republicans, to a member, are considered cinches to oppose any Biden package with a tax increase.
Norquist’s confidence in thwarting any measure with a tax increase is underscored, he told us, “by a Harvard-Harris poll showing about 80% of Americans nationwide oppose raising taxes at this time.”
(Harvard-Harris is run by veteran Democratic pollster Mark Penn).
“We want months of this going back and forth and take a long time — close to the election,” said Norquist of the debate over raising taxes, “And even if it passes with the smallest increase of all, everyone who said ‘yes’ to it will own it.”
The ATR president also pointed to 1994 and Bill Clinton’s record-high tax increase, which passed the Senate with a tie-breaking vote cast by Vice President Al Gore and then passed the House by one vote (when Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Marjorie Margolies Mezvinsky switched from “no” to “yes” after considerable strong-arming from the House Democratic leadership).
In November of that year, Republicans captured control of the Senate and House for the first time in 40 years.
John Gizzi is The Patriot Depot’s chief political columnist and White House correspondent. He is “the man who knows everyone in Washington” as well as many who hold elected positions and party leadership roles throughout America. He has appeared on countless radio and TV shows in America and Europe. He is the recipient of the William A. Rusher Award for Journalistic Excellence and was named Journalist of the Year by the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2002. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
