Grover Norquist

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Grover Norquist : biography

October 19, 1956 –

Grover Glenn Norquist (born October 19, 1956) is a conservative libertarian, and founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform. He is known as the promoter of the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", which prior to the November 2012 election was signed by 95% of all Republican Members of Congress and all but one of the candidates running for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, to oppose increases in marginal income tax rates for individuals and businesses, as well as net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits without a matching reduced tax rate. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Views on government

Norquist favors dramatically reducing the size of the government. He has been noted for his widely quoted quip: "I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Journalist William Greider quotes him saying his goal is to bring America back to what it was "up until Teddy Roosevelt, when the socialists took over. The income tax, the death tax, regulation, all that." When asked by journalist Steven Kroft about the goal of chopping government "in half and then shrink it again to where we were at the turn of the [20th] century" before Social Security and Medicare, Norquist replied, "We functioned in this country with government at eight percent of GDP for a long time and quite well."

Some smaller government advocates argue that Norquist’s "obsession with tax revenue" is actually counterproductive with respect to minimizing the size of government, however. Although the Americans for Tax Reform mission statement is "The government’s power to control one’s life derives from its power to tax. We believe that power should be minimized", critics at the Cato Institute have argued that "holding the line on taxes constrains only one of the four tools (taxes, tax deductions, spending without taxation, and regulation) used by government to alter economic outcomes." Norquist’s perceived failure to call as enthusiastically for corresponding and equally drastic spending cuts has led to criticism from many moderates that he is simply arguing for a false prosperity that is the result of deficit spending created by tax cuts that are not matched by corresponding spending cuts, and that he and other far right conservatives want future generations to pay for present prosperity with their financial futures. Norquist published Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives, in 2008. In 2012, he published Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, with John R. Lott, Jr. He has served as a monthly "Politics" columnist and contributing editor to The American Spectator.

Norquist has also called for reductions in defense spending as one way to reduce the size of government.DiMascio, Jen Aviation Week & Space Technology, August 20, 2012. And is in favor of letting sequestration hit the defense budget.

Writings

  • Rock the House. Ft. Lauderdale, Fla: VYTIS Press, 1995. ISBN 978-0-9645786-0-9
  • Taxes: The Economic & Philosophical Necessity of Real Reform. Minneapolis, MN: Center of the American Experiment, 1996.
  • "America is freedom" chapter from Deaver, Michael K. Why I Am a Reagan Conservative, Chapter New York: W. Morrow, 2005. ISBN 978-0-06-055976-2
  • Leave Us Alone: Getting the Governments Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives. New York, NY: W. Morrow, 2008. ISBN 978-0-06-113395-4
  • Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012. ISBN 978-1-118-18617-6

Early life

Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts. He is the son of Carol (née Lutz) and Warren Elliott Norquist (a vice president of Polaroid Corporation), and is of Swedish ancestry. Norquist became involved with politics at an early age when he volunteered for the 1968 Nixon campaign, assisting with get out the vote efforts. He graduated from Weston High School and enrolled at Harvard University in 1974, where he earned his B.A. and M.B.A. degrees.