Photograph by Rich Clement/Bloomberg

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

In Washington, up is often down.

No is sometimes yes.

And a pledge isn’t necessarily a pledge.

Grover Norquist, famously the author of a pledge against tax increases that most members of the House of Representatives have signed, reports today that a vote for House Speaker John Boehner’s plan to let tax rates rise for households earning more than $1 million will not violate the Americans for Tax Reform pledge signed by all those lawmakers. Norquist has long maintained that allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire is not a violation of his pledge.

While this Plan B note may come as welcome news for Boehner, advancing his so-called “Plan B” tomorrow as a fallback option in the event negotiations fail to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and spending cuts at year’s end, it’s head-scratching news for any onlooker.

“ATR has consistently maintained that individual Members of Congress make a pledge to their constituents to oppose and vote against tax increases,” reads a statement posted by Ryan Ellis, tax policy director for the organization, at Norquist’s Web-site. “The House this week will vote on a tax bill. This legislation—popularly known as “Plan B”–permanently prevents a tax increase on families making less than $1 million per year.

“Republicans supporting this bill are this week affirming to their constituents in writing that this bill — the sole purpose of which is to prevent tax increases — is consistent with the pledge they made to them. In ATR’s analysis, it is extremely difficult — if not impossible—to fault these Republicans’ assertion.

“In particular, in this Congress the House has already voted twice to prevent any tax increases on any American. When viewed with this in mind, and considering this tax bill contains no tax increases of any kind — in fact, it permanently prevents them — matters become more clear. Having finally seen actual legislation in writing, ATR is now able to make its determination about a legislative proposal related to the fiscal cliff. ATR will not consider a vote for this measure a violation of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.”

It may be great cover for Boehner, working to rally the votes needed for his fallback.

And, in allowing tax rates for the highest earners to lapse to pre-George W. Bush levels — which is what Plan B would do for that $1 million-plus crowd — the argument may be made, as Norquist has, that this is not really a tax increase.

Still, that pledge signed by 238 members of the House and 41 in the Senate says they will “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business.”

The expiration of the Bush tax cuts, combined with Plan B, raises the top income tax rate from 35 to 39.6 percent.

It’s true that both Boehner’s plan and the president’s proposal to protect households earning less than $250,000 a year — or $400,000 a year, as he has offered in talks with the speaker — hold the vast majority of Americans harmless from income tax increases.

Yet ask anyone earning more than $1 million a year who has paid Bush-era tax rates since 2001 and 2003 what they think of the endorsement from camp Norquist today.

Original post is Norquist: `Plan B’ OK by Tax Pledge by Political Capital.

In recent days, Norquist has wandered from The Nutcracker ballet to a crime scene investigation, to a Catholic schoolboy in the confessional, to a GOP lawmaker’s matrimonial vows — all in search of the right denunciatory images for the growing number of Republicans who say they’d consider raising taxes.

Those who would entertain a tax hikes have “sugar plum fairies dancing in their head,” Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform, told the Huffington Post Wednesday.

Backing a tax increase means Republicans would  “have their fingerprints on the murder weapon,” he said at a Politico breakfast on Wednesday.

Those talking about renouncing the anti-tax pledge are beset by “impure thoughts”, Norquist told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien on Monday.

In the same interview, Norquist said the idea that Democrats will agree to a fiscal-cliff forestalling package with enough entitlement cuts to offset a tax increase is like imagining “a pink unicorn.” He was talking about that unicorn on National Public Radio, too.

Also on Monday, Norquist took a swipe at Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, who said he’d consider repudiating the pledge he signed more than a decade ago because circumstances have changed.

“I hope his wife understands the commitments last a little longer than two years or something,” Norquist told CNN’s Piers Morgan.

Norquist is a “lowlife,” and his wife will “knock (Norquist’s) head off,” King subsequently fired back in Politico, proving, perhaps, that Norquist does not yet have the market on over-top-commentary cornered.

Norquist’s colorful defense of the pledge should not surprise anyone.

The vow itself is a yawner, but the animating statement underlying it is anything but.

“I don’t want to abolish government,” Norquist said on NPR in 2001. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

If enough Republicans stray from their vows and taxes are raised, it may be because lapsed pledgers agree with another recent much-publicized observation by Norquist, originally meant to apply to Mitt Romney.

They may decide, however, that it’s Norquist who is the “poopy head.”

Norquist’s facility with words does not extend to spelling them.

The ATR web page describing the pledge and how it has become mandatory for Republicans seeking office misspells “de rigueur” two different ways.

Original post is Norquist’s Brash Managerie: Pledge-Breakers Beware the `Sugar Plums’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images

Founder of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist during a debate at American Enterprise Institute.

For all the talk that “Grover is over” in Washington lately, the only thing the author of the famous anti-tax pledge is all over, it appears, is radio and television.

Grover Norquist, who still will count a majority of the Republican-run House as signers of the Americans for Tax Reform pledge to avert tax increases without equivalent spending cuts when the next Congress convenes in January, has been talking a lot lately about the “pink unicorn” — that spending cut significant enough to free his pledge-signers from their vows.

He’s talking about it on National Public Radio this morning, and he’ll be talking about it, for sure, at the Politico-sponsored breakfast which he will headline in the capital today.

The ranks of lawmakers who have signed Norquist’s pledge have declined, while still a majority in the Republican-run House. In the 113th Congress that will convene in January, 219 of the 435 House members have signed the pledge, according to Americans for Tax Reform. In the new Senate, 39 of the 100 senators are signers.

The 112th Congress, which will finish its business by year’s end and which hopes to confront the fiscal cliff of automatic spending cuts and baked-in tax increases by then, includes 238 House signers of the pledge and 41 in the Senate. Meanwhile, some pledge-signers, including Chambliss, Corker, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Representative Peter Kingof New York, all Republicans, say they aren’t bound by it any more.

Norquist, who really isn’t worried about the Senate so much as the House holding his line, suggests that Graham and company will never see the spending cuts needed to set them free from his pledge.

“You’re talking about a hypothetical, and this is where someone like Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, got himself wrapped around the axle,” Norquist says in an interview airing today on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”

Graham’s “anti-tax pledge — he made a commitment to the people of South Carolina,” Norquist says in the radio interview. “But, he has made it very clear — and we’ve had a long conversation about this, because I was trying to figure out what he was talking about — he imagines that the Democrats will agree to fundamental reform of entitlements, something they haven’t done in, oh, I don’t know, 60 years.”

“But we imagine that they’re going to,” he says. “We imagine a pink unicorn.”

“If you had a pink unicorn, how many dollars in taxes would you raise to trade for the pink unicorn? ” he asks. “Since pink unicorns do not exist in the real world, it has never occurred to me to worry about the senator from South Carolina. He’s not going to vote for a deal, because the kind of 10-to-one ratio deal he’s talking about with real ironclad spending cuts is never going to happen.”

Original post is No, South Carolina, Norquist Says, There is no Pink Unicorn by Political Capital.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Photograph by Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Everyone knows about Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge.

That line in the sand that many members of Congress, almost all Republican, have signed — a complicating factor in any talks going forward about averting the “fiscal cliff” or addressing “tax reform” in the year ahead.

What you may not know is this:

They will still represent a slim majority of the House in 2013, though their roster is shrinking.

In the 113th Congress that will convene in January, 219 of the 435 House members have signed the pledge, according to the count of Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. In the new Senate, 39 of the 100 senators are signers.

In the 112th Congress finishing its lame-duck business, there are 238 signers of Norquist’s pledge in the House, 41 in the Senate.

For the record, that vow reads like this: “I, _, pledge to the taxpayers of the district of the state of and to the American people that I will: One, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses; and Two, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

Original post is Norquist’s Anti-Tax Signers: House-Majority Still, as Roster Shrinks by Political Capital.

Photograph by Peter Foley/Bloomberg

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Grover Norquist, who has demanded pledges against new taxes from members of Congress, is counting heads.

While still-unsettled races could change these totals, here’s where the tally stands for his Americans for Tax Reform and its influential anti-tax pledge:

— Current pledge-signing members of the House and Senate: 279.

— Returning pledgers plus pledge-signing freshmen in the 113th Congress: at least 264.

That said, there are still some big names on the list, such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp and House Speaker John Boehner.

Here’s what Boehner said today on the subject of taxes: “Because the American people expect us to find common ground, we are willing to accept some additional revenues, via tax reform.”

“Shoring up entitlements and reforming the tax code — closing special-interest loopholes and deductions, and moving to a fairer, simpler system — will bring jobs home and result in a stronger, healthier economy,” he said.

Original post is Grover’s Caucus Takes Attendance by Political Capital.

Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, addresses the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington.

Now comes the mail.

After the hundreds of thousands of TV ads bombarding the voters of several swing states, the Web videos arriving via YouTube, 140-character screeds delivered in Tweets and, yes, the radio ads as well, it’s time for the direct mail.

The letter carrier this weekend brought a glossy missive from Americans for Tax Reform — Grover Norquist’s Washington-based group — slamming President Barack Obama for a 2013 budget that “could mean $1.5 trillion in tax increases.”

This is from the anti-tax activist who has exacted no-new-tax pledges from many members of Congress — Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has signed Norquist’s pledge, as has his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Budget Committee. That pledge is partly responsible for the gridlock preventing Congress from agreeing upon long-term deficit-reduction — a deal which the chairmen of the Simpson-Bowles commission concluded requires a share of tax increases as well as spending cuts.

The alarming mailing that showed up in an Alexandria, Virginia, mail slot failed to mention that Obama’s plan for taxes next year is to let the Bush-era tax cuts expire for households earning more than $250,000 a year while continuing those tax cuts for the vast majority of Americans who make less than $250,000.

It also warns that Obama’s 2013 budget includes “nearly $1 trillion in deficit spending.”

What it doesn’t say is that, should Romney win election in November, his 2013 budget necessarily will include about $1 trillion in deficit spending as well. That’s because the plan that Romney proposes — cutting everyone’s taxes by 20 percent while eliminating tax exemptions for high-end earners — is intended to be “revenue neutral.” That means it doesn’t alter the overall income for the government in the process. The overall income of the federal government will be about $1 trillion less than what it spends next year under either Obama’s or Romney’s plans. Neither Obama nor Romney has proposed a plan that eliminates the annual federal deficit in the near future.

The Norquist mailing warns that Obama’s $1.5 trillion tax hike would “pull the plug on Virginia businesses’ power to create jobs.” Yet most small businesses would be protected from tax increases under a plan that continues the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning less than $250,000 a year. The Obama campaign has been contending in its own TV ads that it actually is Romney who will increase taxes on the middle class with a plan that forces the elimination of many tax exemptions to balance the ledger. Obama cites the Tax Policy Center for that conclusion. The truth is, it’s impossible to know what Romney’s plan will do because he hasn’t specified what exemptions would be curtailed or eliminated.

Alexandria may be suburban Washington to some people,  but it’s actually part of the Democratic-leaning sector of one of the states which Obama and Romney are struggling to win on Nov. 6 – Obama won Virginia in 2008. It’s been six decades since Democrats won two consecutive presidential contests in Virginia.

Which means more mail is on the way.

Original post is Grover Norquist Calling on Virginia: You Have Tax-Mail Attacking Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

Rep. Paul Ryan at a campaign event at Walsh University on August 16, 2012 in North Canton, Ohio.

Paul Ryan could be to economics and tax policy what Dick Cheney was to national security — should Republican Mitt Romney win election as president.

That’s how Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, sees it.

“I think that he would certainly have a large footprint,” Norquist said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital With Al Hunt” airing this weekend.

Norquist, known for a no-new-taxes pledge signed by many Republicans — including Ryan — predicted that as president Romney would push through a comprehensive tax-code overhaul based on elements of Ryan’s budget plan “with the rough edges taken off and changes here and there.”

Norquist said such a measure would be similar to the tax-cut package enacted in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan based on a proposal put forth by then-Representative Jack Kemp of New York and then-Senator William Roth of Delaware, both Republicans. Reagan endorsed the Kemp-Roth plan during his 1980 presidential campaign.

If Romney ousts President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 election, his administration and Congress early in 2013 will strike a long-term deficit reduction deal that doesn’t include a net revenue increase, Norquist predicted.

“It’ll look like the Ryan plan,” he said. “It will not have a tax increase in it.”

See the full report on Al Hunt’s interview with Norquist at Bloomberg News. 

Original post is Romney’s Cheney: Norquist’s View by Political Capital.