Economists on both left and right now recognize the need for massive government spending to dig the economy out of its current recession. The Wall Street Journal notes that states that are coping with big budget deficits may now have to “either propose or accept tax increases.” Right-wing ideologue Grover Norquist — who once famously quipped “I simply want to reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub” — sees an opportunity to turn his dreams into reality:
And there is no better way to alienate the base of the Republican Party than to push for, or acquiesce to, tax increases.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to separate the sheep from the goats,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “The guys who turn around and say ‘I can’t rein in spending, I must raise taxes’…are going to have a hard time.”
Adopting Norquist’s neo-Hooverist suggestion of cutting spending would only deepen the recession.