Liberals equal Grover Norquist: Perhaps, even worse

I know some people who think Grover Norquist is the devil. He is a national impediment to fiscal sanity and standing in the way of prosperity due to his beliefs taxes are too high, should not be increased and government is too pervasive. 

I do not personally know Mr. Norquist. I have heard him speak a few times, seen him at political events. He seems like a sincere person, steeped perhaps in his own self-importance.

It seems Mr. Norquist runs an organization called Americans for Tax Reform where he is known as the promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", basically a promise by politicians to not increase taxes.  If they violate the pledge they have signed, he lets those that pay attention to such things know about it. Seems to me a fairly shrewd way to run a political operation.

If I were a politician, I would not sign such a pledge. I do not believe in such gimmicks and pledges and would never want to limit my options. That does not mean higher taxes are a good thing. Indeed, I advocate a complete revision of the tax system including examining what levels of taxes for all taxpayers are reasonable. That may mean some pay more and some would pay less. This also means that I do not believe  47 percent of people should not pay any income tax at all.

The denying of revenue to government in order for it to be in private hands is an economic means to promote growth. A worthy objective. Denying revenue to government used to be an attempt to restrain the growth of government based on the premise there was a limit on how much debt the government would undertake, a premise that has been shattered first by President Bush and then obliterated and ignored by Mr. Obama.

What bothers me most of all is the Norquist detractors-to be polite- miss the entire point altogether and if they think he is a zealot they are equally so and probably more so. It is after all, not only the taxes, it is the spending stupid.

Liberals cry that everything will be fine if we can just tax the wealthy, tax the rich, and go after the one percent. Not so. Even if, say, Mr. Obama’s plan to tax the wealthy goes into effect, the revenue raised would barely dent the deficit. Such a strategy, the notion and belief that this will cure all that ails the economy is misinformed at best, disingenuous and actually intellectually dishonest.

The deficit accumulates at about $4 billion a day, over a trillion dollars in each of the last four years. The debt ceiling which was raised more than $1.5 trillion to $16.3 trillion about 15 months ago will bump this new limit in a few weeks. It will go over $17 billion before the end of next years. At the current pace, before Mr. Obama leaves office, it will be above $20 trillion and that is real money. This is unsustainable. However, these same liberals-the ones crying for more taxes- refuse to discuss, negotiate, and even consider any reduction in the very spending programs that are driving the deficit. In my opinion, that puts them in the same category as Mr. Norquist. No compromise, no room to budge, no listening to the other side.

Cannot change Social Security, cannot fool with Medicare, no tooling with Medicaid, food stamps, aid to this, grants to that, subsidies for that. Remember next year we all have to pay for the health care cost of 30 million more deserving souls.

Republicans have been accused of being the party of NO. The Democrats appear to be the party of YES and NO. Yes to any conceivable spending program and NO to anything that would curtail, slow the relentless growth of government.