Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist reacted swiftly Tuesday afternoon to an announcement by President Obama that he would ask Congress to delay scheduled spending cuts in exchange for tax increases.
Norquist criticized the president as too often “voting present” instead of “being part of the solution” to out of control government spending.
Norquist’s statement:
Every time the issue of reducing federal spending comes up, Obama responds by asking for higher taxes instead.
In August of 2011, after a long national debate, President Obama agreed to trim $2.5 trillion from his projected $47 trillion in federal spending over the next decade. Now, he is saying he wasn’t telling the truth. He wants to raise taxes instead of reducing spending.
Instead of reducing spending, President Obama offers a list of tax increases. Those tax increases come in the form of eliminating tax credits and deductions that will be needed help pay for fundamental tax reform that many Democrats in congress claim to support. How will America bring her 35 percent corporate income tax rate down to the European average of 25 percent if Obama has already ‘spent’ the tax deductions and credits that are expected to be the tradeoffs for tax reform? Eliminating deductions and credits outside of revenue neutral tax reform makes difficult or impossible future tax reform that most politicians in Washington say they support.
The President needs to go back to the drawing board and come up with real spending reductions equal to or greater than the sequester. He knows that anything else is just wasting the time of the American people. He should stop voting ‘present’ and actually start being part of the solution.