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Questions for Thinking People
Tax Cuts, Entitlement Programs and the Budget Deficit
Mr. Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals and businesses opposed to higher taxes at both the federal, state and local levels. ATR organizes the TAXPAYER PROTECTION PLEDGE, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. To date, President George W. Bush, 211 House members, and 38 Senators have taken the pledge. On the state level, 8 governors and 1279 state legislators have taken the pledge.
Introduction to biography of Grover Norquist, the strategist who helped shape the president's economic program, on the website of Americans for Tax Reform
Paul Krugman, the author of The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century, an economist at Princeton University and New York Time Op-Ed columnist, takes an opposite position on taxes. He says that 42 percent of the Bush tax cuts go to the top 1 percent of the population. As an example of how the right wing wants to "de-fund" entitlement programs created during the Great Depression by Franklin Roosevelt and later by Lyndon Johnson, he notes that: "[T]he revenue that will be sacrificed because of those tax cuts is not a minor concern. On the contrary, that revenue would have been more than enough to 'top up' Social Security and Medicare, allowing them to operate without benefit cuts for the next 75 years."
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