Thread: Is Grover Norquist losing his influence?

By Jake Miller / CBS News/ December 3, 2012, 1:04 PM

Is Grover Norquist losing his influence?

To hear Democrats tell the tale, Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, is perhaps the single biggest impediment to a deficit reduction package that includes new revenue.

Wielding a no-new-taxes pledge signed by a huge majority of congressional Republicans, Norquist is seen by many on the left as the chief of the purity police - the most outspoken, powerful enforcer of Republican unity in opposition to new revenue on the federal ledger.

"You know, everybody's elevated Grover," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I met him for the first time this morning. Nice to meet him, but who is he? Why is he this guy who has captured attention in this?"
McCaskill, of course, knows perfectly well who Norquist is - her question was rhetorical, an almost-bewildered commentary on the centrality of this unelected, low-tax evangelist in the ongoing tax reform negotiations on Capitol Hill.

But if the last few weeks have been any indication, more than a few Republicans may be preparing to jettison Norquist's anti-tax dogma to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff."

Indeed, of the 38 GOP freshmen legislators that will assume office as part of the 113th Congress in January, only 26 have signed Norquist's pledge - a strong majority, but a far cry from the 96 of 99 GOP freshmen in the 112th Congress who signed on two years ago, reports Bloomberg News.

One incoming freshman, Rep.-elect Susan Brooks of Indiana, told Bloomberg News, "I am generally opposed to tax increases...but that doesn't mean I need to sign a pledge to demonstrate my desire to not raise taxes. I know that governing can be very difficult, and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made."

Brooks' avowal of flexibility follows the lead of several veteran Republican senators who have also recently made a big show of defying Norquist's pledge.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, made waves by declaring that he would "violate the pledge for the sake of the country."

And Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., who has said, "I care more about my country than I do about some 20-year-old pledge," doubled down on his defiance on Saturday, explaining, "I won't be dictated to by anybody in Washington as to how I'm going to vote on anything."

To be sure, the Republicans who remain committed to Norquist's pledge far outnumber those who have publicly telegraphed the possibility of breaking it. Crucially, the signs of flexibility have come from the rank-and-file but not from Republican leaders in either house of Congress.

• "Fiscal cliff" clock ticks, political battle rages
• Norquist: Tea party resurgence if no "fiscal cliff" deal

But even the few glimmers of apostasy are remarkable coming from a caucus whose prior adherence to the pledge was near-ironclad. A preliminary reading of the tea leaves appears to suggest that Norquist may be losing some cachet among the GOP officials whose support has made the pledge such an omnipresent fixture in tax-reform negotiations in Congress.

Some analysts see the push for flexibility more as a product of political expedience than an earnest, Pauline conversion on the question of raising revenue. "It's politically smart to cut the knees out from underneath Grover Norquist," explained Cokie Roberts on ABC's "This Week". "The emperor has no clothes, and to say that is, I think, very useful."

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-34222_162-57556801-10391739/is-grover-norquist-losing-his-influence/

GOP ‘fiscal cliff’ offer: $800 BILLION in real tax increases, $2.2 TRILLION total

By Stephen Dinan and Seth McLaughlin - The Washington Times
House Republicans delivered a $2.2 trillion “fiscal cliff” counteroffer to the White House on Monday, including $800 billion in new tax increases, as they sought to jump-

GOP ‘fiscal cliff’ offer: $800B in real tax increases, $2.2T total
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...increases-22t/

GOP's $4.6T 'fiscal cliff' counterproposal rebuffed

Susan Davis, USA TODAY
10:58PM EST December 3. 2012 -

WASHINGTON — House Republicans sent a counterproposal to avert the "fiscal cliff" to the White House on Monday outlining a $4.6 trillion deficit reduction proposal without raising tax rates.


President Obama and Senate Democrats have said that without a deal to raise tax rates on the wealthiest Americans there is no path forward to avert the fiscal cliff at the end of the year when George W. Bush-era tax rates expire and $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years are triggered.
The Republicans' proposal is based on a framework outlined last year by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired Obama's debt commission, and included an increase in the eligibility age for Medicare benefits. Republicans did not offer specific language on raising the age in their proposal, but Bowles has supported raising the age to 67. Boehner called it a "la-la land offer" on Monday.

MORE: 'Fiscal cliff' talks likely to last all month (at least)

Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, also discussed gradually raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 during their unsuccessful talks on deficit reduction in 2011.
"What we're putting forth is a credible plan that deserves serious consideration by the White House and I would hope that they would respond in a timely and responsible way," Boehner told reporters.
The GOP offer is in response to a White House plan presented to congressional leaders last week by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, which was dismissed by GOP leaders who said its $1.6 trillion request for new tax revenue without comparable spending cuts or entitlement changes was an unserious proposal.
The House GOP plan received a similar reception Monday from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, who said the Republican plan "does not meet the test of balance. In fact, it actually promises to lower rates for the wealthy and sticks the middle class with the bill. Their plan includes nothing new and provides no details on which deductions they would eliminate, which loopholes they will close or which Medicare savings they would achieve. Independent analysts who have looked at plans like this one have concluded that middle class taxes will have to go up to pay for lower rates for millionaires and billionaires."
Bowles also took issue with the House plan.
"While I'm flattered the Speaker would call something 'the Bowles plan,' the approach outlined in the letter Speaker Boehner sent to the president does not represent the Simpson-Bowles plan, nor is it the Bowles plan," Bowles said in a statement released Monday afternoon.
"Every offer put forward brings us closer to a deal, but to reach an agreement, it will be necessary for both sides to move beyond their opening positions and reach agreement on a comprehensive plan which avoids the fiscal cliff and puts the debt on a clear downward path relative to the economy," Bowles' statement said.
At Monday's briefing at the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said: "What the president believes is that you cannot mathematically achieve the kinds of revenue that are necessary for that balanced approach through any other means. So rates have to rise. And the Republicans need to acknowledge ... that's the only way to get from here to there."
The House Republicans' proposal was short on specifics but calls for $800 billion in new revenue achieved through closing loopholes and capping deductions; $900 billion in health care and other mandatory spending cuts; $300 billion in spending cuts for discretionary spending, which includes social programs such as food stamps; and $200 billion gained by changing the way the government calculates cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security and Medicare.
The GOP plan achieves enough in deficit reduction to turn off the $1.2 trillion automatic spending cuts at the end of the year to resolve that component of the "fiscal cliff," two senior GOP congressional aides said. They spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the details of the proposal.
The GOP plan does not include any proposal on how to raise the debt ceiling, which is another non-starter for the White House which wants to use the fiscal cliff negotiations to include an agreement to raise the debt ceiling in February when the U.S. is expected to hit its $16.4 trillion borrowing limit. The president wants to avoid another debt limit fight with congressional Republicans like the one that rattled Wall Street in the summer of 2011.
Boehner will attend a holiday reception at the White House tonight. Asked if he would discuss his proposal with the president he quipped: "I might run in to him."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2012/12/03/gop-cliff-counteroffer/1743307/

Two conservative Republicans booted from House budget panel

By David Lawder | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives have been kicked off the House Budget Committee, a rare move that could make it easier for the panel to advance a deal with Democrats to cut fiscal deficits.

Representatives Tim Huelskamp of Kansas and Justin Amash of Michigan - both favorites of the anti-tax Tea Party movement - are among those Republicans voting most often against House Speaker John Boehner.

Huelskamp and Amash, who both will begin second terms in the House next month, voted against last year's deal to raise the federal debt limit and staunchly oppose any tax increases. Boehner has now included new revenue in his latest offer to avert the "fiscal cliff" of year-end tax hikes and automatic spending cuts.

Given their voting records, winning support from Huelskamp and Amash for such a compromise seemed an uphill battle.

Huelskamp released a statement saying the Republican leadership "might think they have silenced conservatives but removing me and others from key committees only confirms our conservative convictions.

"This is clearly a vindictive move and a sure sign that the GOP establishment cannot handle disagreement," he said.

Huelskamp and Amash had said that despite sweeping changes to the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, committee chairman Paul Ryan's budget did not make deep enough cuts to entitlement programs and military spending.

Boehner spokesman Michael Steel declined to be specific on the reasons for their ouster by the House Republican Steering Committee, which occurred Monday in a closed-door meeting.

"The Steering Committee makes decisions based on a range of factors," Steel said.

Huelskamp said he was given "limited explanation" for his removal from the Budget Committee, a move he called "vindictive." A spokesman for Amash could not be immediately reached for comment.

Huelskamp and Amash cast the only House Budget Committee votes against Ryan's budget plan earlier this year.

While there is often wrangling over committee chairmanships just before a new Congress takes office, it is rare for rank-and-file committee members to be stripped of their assignments.

The 34-member Republican steering committee is headed by Boehner and includes members of House leadership, committee chairs and other lawmakers representing different regions of the country.

The same group last week recommended that Ryan, the conservative former Republican vice presidential candidate, be renewed as Budget Committee chairman.

http://news.yahoo.com/two-conservative-republicans-booted-house-budget-panel-154212850--business.html

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The concept is for the House to give Obama the middle-class tax-cut extension he is seeking
without any extension of the upper-income cuts and to give him "nothing else."

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