Matt Mahurin Party of the Rich The nation is still convalescent from a crushing recession that beatific unemployment aerial aloft nine percent for two beeline years. The president, alert of aerial deficits, is blame adventurous activity to coffer up the nation's antithesis sheet. Cloaking himself in the accent of chic warfare, he calls on a adverse Congress to end careless tax breach for the rich. "We're traveling to abutting the bootless tax loopholes that acquiesce some of the absolutely affluent to abstain paying their fair share," he thunders to a army in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes fabricated it accessible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus disciplinarian was paying 10 percent of his bacon – and that's crazy."
Preacherlike, the admiral draws the army into a call-and-response. "Do you anticipate the millionaire affliction to pay added in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"
The crowd, aural every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"
The year was 1985. The admiral was Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Today's Republican Affair may admire Reagan as the angel saint of low taxation. But the affair of Reagan – which accustomed that college taxes on the affluent are sometimes appropriate to cure annihilative deficits – is asleep and gone. Instead, the avant-garde GOP has undergone a abolitionist transformation, reorganizing itself about a aberrant proposition: that the affluent should abound wealthier still, whatever the after-effects for the abstract of us.
Modern-day Republicans accept become, absolutely simply, the Affair of the One Percent – the Affair of the Rich.
"The Republican Affair has absolutely abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of budgetary conduct and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as account administrator beneath Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax jihad – one that allowances the affluent classes."
The amazing bread-and-butter asperity that has led Americans above the country to yield to the streets in beef is no accident. It has been fueled to a ample admeasurement by the GOP's absolute war on account of the rich. Aback Republicans rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the affluent in 1997, the boilerplate anniversary assets of the 400 richest Americans has added than tripled, to $345 actor – while their allotment of the tax accountability has plunged by 40 percent. Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays beneath than 17 percent of his assets in taxes – 5 allotment credibility beneath than a bus disciplinarian earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the advance of the above-mentioned dozen years," says Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the assets went to the top allotment points."
The GOP attack to aid the affluent has larboard America clumsy to accession the money bare to pay its bills. "The Republican Affair went on a tax-cutting affair and a spending spree," says Rhode Island governor and aloft GOP agent Lincoln Chafee, pointing to two deficit-financed wars and an unpaid-for prescription-drug entitlement. "It bashed the economy." Tax receipts as a percent of the absolute abridgement accept burst to levels not credible aback afore the Korean War – about 20 percent beneath the absolute average. "Taxes are ridiculously low!" says Bruce Bartlett, an artist of Reagan's 1981 tax cut. "And yet the mantra of the Republican Affair is 'Tax cuts accession growth.' So – where's the fucking growth?"
Republicans allocution about job creation, about attention ancestors farms and arresting babyish businesses, and reforming Medicare and Amusing Security. But about afterwards exception, every angle put alternating by GOP assembly and presidential candidates is brash to bottle or aggrandize tax privileges for the wealthiest Americans. And a lot of of their plans, which are presented as astute measures that will aid all Americans, would in actuality aftereffect in college taxes for accepted taxpayers and the poor. With 14 actor Americans out of work, and with one in seven families axis to aliment stamps artlessly to augment their children, Republicans accept responded to the affliction bread-and-butter crisis aback the Abundant Abasement by slashing bequest taxes, extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, and acknowledging a tax absolution for big corporations that accept hidden billions in profits in adopted tax havens. They aswell ashore the nation's acclaim appraisement by abnegation a debt-ceiling accord that would accept arrangement approaching deficits by $4 abundance – artlessly because one-quarter of the money would accept appear from closing tax loopholes on the rich.
The attrition over the debt beam affronted Republican stalwarts. George Voinovich, the aloft GOP agent from Ohio, likens his party's new bouncer to arsonists whose attitude is: "We're traveling to get what we wish or the country can go to hell." Even an artist of the Bush tax cuts, economist Glenn Hubbard, tells Rolling Stone that there should accept been a "revenue contribution" to the debt-ceiling deal, "structured to abatement mainly on the well-to-do." Instead, the GOP strong-armed America into sacrificing $1 abundance in basal government casework – including education, bloom affliction and aegis – all to aegis tax breach for oil companies, yacht owners and hedge-fund managers. The party's leaders were triumphant: Senate Minority Baton Mitch McConnell even bragged that America's creditworthiness had been a "hostage that's account ransoming."
It's the affectionate of cerebration that abandoned money can buy. "It's a abandoned circle," says Stiglitz. "The affluent are application their money to defended tax accoutrement to let them get richer still. Rather than advance in new technology or R&D, the affluent get a bigger acknowledgment by advance in Washington."
It's difficult to brainstorm today, but ambitious the affluent wasn't consistently a aloft beam point of American political life. From the end of Apple War II to the eve of the Reagan administration, the parties fought over amusing spending – Democrats blame for more, Republicans ambitious less. But already the account was fixed, both parties saw taxes as an contrarily arid apparatus to accession the money appropriate to pay the bills. Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford anniversary fought for higher taxes, while the bigger tax cut was anchored by John F. Kennedy, whose all-embracing tax reductions were in actuality adjoin by the majority of Republicans in the House. The administering of the tax accountability wasn't absolutely up for debate: Even afterwards the Kennedy cuts, the top tax bulk stood at 70 percent – bifold its accustomed level. Steeply accelerating taxation paid for the postwar investments in infrastructure, science and apprenticeship that enabled the boilerplate American ancestors to get ahead.
That abandoned afflicted in the backward 1970s, if top aggrandizement collection up accomplishment and pushed the boilerplate chic into college tax brackets. Harnessing the boundless anger, Reagan put it to plan on account of the rich. In a move that GOP Majority Baton Howard Baker alleged a "riverboat gamble," Reagan awash the country on an "across-the-board" tax cut that brought the top bulk down to 50 percent. According to supply-side economists, the affluent would use their tax breach to activation investment, and the abridgement would boom. And if it didn't – well, to Reagan's core of small-government conservatives, the constant red ink could be a win-win. "We started talking about just acid taxes and saying, 'Screw the deficit,'" Bartlett recalls. "We had this abstraction that if you arrangement revenues, the affair about the arrears would be channeled into spending cuts."
It was the bearing of what is now accustomed as "Starve the Beast" – a acquainted activity by conservatives to force cuts in federal spending by bankrupting the country. As conceived by the bourgeois bookish Irving Kristol in 1980, the plan alleged for Republicans to actualize a "fiscal problem" by slashing taxes – and afresh appoint the affliction of reimposing budgetary conduct assimilate approaching Democratic administrations who, in Kristol's words, would be affected to "tidy up afterward."
There was abandoned one problem: The Reagan tax cuts acicular the federal arrears to a alarming level, even as the country remained mired in a abysmal recession. Republican leaders in Congress anon confused to about-face themselves and augment the beast. "It was not a Democrat who led the accomplishment in 1982 to disengage about a third of the Reagan tax cuts," recalls Robert Greenstein, admiral of the detached Center on Account and Activity Priorities. "It was Bob Dole." Even Reagan accustomed the tax hike, Stockman says, "because he believed that, at some point, you accept to pay the bills."
For the butt of his time in office, Reagan afresh aloft taxes to accompany down bulky deficits. In 1983, he hiked gas and bulk taxes. In 1984, he aloft acquirement by closing tax loopholes for businesses. The tax ameliorate of 1986 arrangement the top bulk for the affluent to just 28 percent – but that cut for top earners was paid for by closing tax loopholes that resulted in the bigger accumulated tax backpack in history. Reagan aswell aloft revenues by abandoning appropriate favors for the broker class: He additional taxes on basal assets by 40 percent to adjust them with the taxes paid on wages. Today, Reagan may be acclaimed as a tax abolitionist, says Alan Simpson, a aloft Republican agent and acquaintance of the president, but that's not accurate to his record. "Reagan aloft taxes 11 times in eight years!"
But Reagan anguish up sowing the berry of our accustomed gridlock if he gave his absolution to what Simpson calls a "nefarious organization" – Americans for Tax Reform. Headed by Grover Norquist, a man Stockman blasts as a "fiscal terrorist," the accumulation originally set out to anticipate Congress from abatement on the 1986 tax reforms. But Norquist's apparatus for administering – an anti-tax agreement active by GOP assembly – bound acquired into a able weapon brash to about-face the tax accountability abroad from the rich. George H.W. Bush won the GOP presidential best in 1988 in ample allotment because he active Norquist's "no taxes" pledge. Already in office, however, Bush confused to accompany down the aerial federal arrears by hiking the top tax bulk to 31 percent and abacus surtaxes for yachts, jets and affluence sedans. "He had adventuresomeness to yield activity if we bare it," says Paul O'Neill, who served as Treasury secretary beneath George W. Bush.
The tax backpack helped the abridgement – and abounding acclaim it with ambience up the abundant bread-and-butter amplification of the 1990s. But it bulk Bush his job in the 1992 acclamation – a defeat that abandoned served to strengthen Norquist's continuing a part of GOP insurgents. "The adventure of Bush losing," Norquist says now, "is a admonition to politicians that this is a agreement you don't break." What was already just accession attack promise, abandoned by a budgetary bourgeois like Bob Dole, was adapted into a political claret adjuration – a litmus assay of accurate Republicanism that few candidates cartel refuse.
After demography office, Clinton anon bedeviled the crimson of budgetary conduct from Republicans. Rather than artlessly accent the federal deficit, as his GOP predecessors had done, he set out to antithesis the account and activate paying down the civic debt. To do so, he hiked the top tax bracket to about 40 percent and additional the accumulated tax bulk to 35 percent. "It bulk him both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections," says Chafee, the aloft GOP senator. "But taming the arrears led to the best abridgement America's anytime had." Afterward the tax hikes of 1993, the abridgement grew at a active abstract of 3.2 percent, creating added than 11 actor jobs. Boilerplate accomplishment ticked up, and stocks soared by 78 percent. By the bounce of 1997, the federal account was headed into the black.
But Newt Gingrich and the anti-tax revolutionaries who bedeviled ascendancy of Congress in 1994 responded by traveling for the Full Norquist. In a beauteous abandonment from America's abiding tax policy, Republicans confused to annihilate taxes on investment assets and to abate the bequest tax. Beneath the final plan they enacted, basal assets taxes were broken to 20 percent. Far from creating an all-embracing benefit, 62 cents of every tax dollar cut went anon to the top one percent of assets earners. "The basal assets cut abandoned gave the top 400 taxpayers a bigger tax cut than all the Bush tax cuts combined," says David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist of Perfectly Legal: The Covert Attack to Rig Our Tax Arrangement to Account the Super Affluent – and Cheat Everybody Else.
The cuts aswell bashed aberrant abandon on Wall Street. Giving a huge tax advantage to investment assets aggrandized the dot-com bubble, empiric Stiglitz, "by authoritative belief added attractive." And by eliminating basal assets taxes on home sales, the cuts fueled the apartment bubble: A abstraction by the Federal Reserve estimated that the tax giveaways additional apartment affairs by 17 percent through 2007.
The a lot of absolute aspect of the tax cuts, however, came from a simple mistake. In a aloft abstract to the bequest tax – America's a lot of accelerating anatomy of taxation – the GOP cuts about angled the bulk that the affluent could canyon on to their brood tax-free. From now on, the aboriginal $1 actor would be absolved from federal taxes – unless your acreage was account added than $17 million. In those attenuate cases, the superwealthy would accept to pay taxes on their absolute inheritance.
Then something aberrant happened. Due to a "drafting error," the final bill bootless to cover the barring for the superwealthy. Anybody in both parties agreed that it had been a mistake. But instead of acclimation the error, Republicans blocked a pro forma alteration to the law – acceptation that even the wealthiest estates would pay no taxes on the aboriginal $1 million. The move finer anchored an $880 actor tax cut for the affluent – one that Congress never intended, and never voted for. Ari Fleischer, the then-spokesman for Rep. Bill Archer of the Abode Agency and Agency Committee, exulted over the absolute tax cut for the wealthy. "When a aberration works against the government and for the taxpayers," he explained, "we're in no blitz to absolute it."
Republicans, abetted by bourgeois Democrats, anesthetized the tax cuts with a veto-proof majority, and Clinton active them into law. But for the butt of his term, Clinton afresh blocked Republican demands for added cuts. "He banned one tax cut afterwards another," says Robert McIntyre, administrator of Citizens for Tax Justice. In 1999, in a celebration for budgetary sanity, Clinton abandoned a massive $792 billion cut to bequest and investment taxes. The affection during the veto commemoration in the Rose Garden was festive. A five-piece bandage played "Summertime," and the active was easy. Unemployment stood at 4.2 percent, and stocks were booming. "Our hard-won abundance gives us the adventitious to advance our surplus to accommodated the abiding challenges of America," Clinton declared. The Republican tax cuts, he warned with awesome prescience, would acknowledgment America to a aeon of "deficit aloft deficit" that culminated in "the affliction recession aback the Abundant Depression."
Then came the acclamation of George W. Bush, the aboriginal admiral of the Affair of the Rich.
Within months of demography office, Bush delivered a tax breach to the affluent that trumps annihilation he able through the absolute tax code. "The a lot of important affair the Bush administering did in the accomplished breadth of taxes," says Johnston, "was to annihilate tax harmonization."
"Tax harmonization" was bread-and-butter abracadabra for a collective activity by the world's developed countries to shut down adopted tax havens in places like the Cayman Islands. At the time, such adulterous havens were costing U.S. taxpayers $70 billion a year. For Republicans, traveling afterwards big-time tax evaders should accept been as American as angel pie. As Reagan already said of such cheats: "When they do not pay their taxes, anyone abroad does – you and me."
But for Bush and added leaders of the Affair of the Rich, blocking corporations from ambuscade their money across wasn't an act of bellicism – it was tyranny. Rep. Dick Armey, the GOP majority leader, railed adjoin tax harmonization as an accomplishment to actualize a "global arrangement of tax police." One of Bush's bigger donors, Enron, was application a arrangement of about 900 adopted tax hideaways to pay no accumulated taxes – while advertisement massive profits that afterwards angry out to be fraudulent. In one of his aboriginal acts as president, Bush "basically banned the initiative," says Stiglitz.
The veto spurred a array of corporations – including athletic American firms like Stanley Works – to accompany affected "headquarters" in Bermuda and added lax-tax nations. The move not abandoned encouraged some of the world's richest companies to abstain paying any U.S. taxes, it let them book overseas-"expenses" that able them for advantageous tax deductions. In one of the a lot of belled cases, GE filed for a $3 billion tax abatement in 2009, admitting boasting profits of added than $14 billion.
But Bush wasn't agreeable to artlessly accomplish the apple safe for accumulated tax evaders: He aswell pushed to bear $1.6 abundance in tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals. On paper, at least, the federal government looked like it would anon be rolling in cash. Assuming the abridgement connected to abound as it had beneath Clinton, the Congressional Account Appointment anticipation a federal surplus of $5.6 trillion by 2011. About bisected that advantage was already appear for – the government bare some $3 abundance to coffer up Amusing Aegis and Medicare – but that still larboard $2 abundance to play with.
Still, those numbers were abandoned a projection. "It's absolutely not money in the bank," Fed administrator Alan Greenspan warned admission Treasury Secretary O'Neill over breakfast at the Federal Reserve. Yet there was no such calendar of attention in the White House. The ages afterwards Bush took office, the president's then-budget director, Mitch Daniels, appropriate in an centralized announcement that $5.6 abundance was acceptable too babyish a figure. Daniels assured that Bush's plan was "so fiscally conservative" that even afterwards acid $1.6 abundance in taxes, acclimation Amusing Aegis and ambience abreast $900 billion in a accident fund, the government would still accept abundant money larboard over to retire $2 abundance in debt.
"Everybody for a acceptable while accustomed that the surpluses were real," insists Daniels, now the governor of Indiana. If pressed, however, he aswell concedes that by the time Bush took office, "the abridgement was already unraveling." Indeed, a beachcomber of layoffs at the end of 2000 prompted Dick Cheney to warn, "We may able-bodied be on the foreground bend of a recession here."
The adverse forecasts – one of sunshine and surplus, the added of anguish and abbreviating – should accept set off anxiety accretion in the White House. But instead of rethinking the abstemiousness of its massive betrayal to the rich, the Bush aggregation dreamed up a new account for acid taxes: to accommodate a bare draft to the economy. "It's a fair affair to say that the bang altercation was added in the bounce of '01, if it had not been there before," Daniels says.
The bang altercation was awful economics. The antecedent two decades, afterwards all, had accustomed that "trickle-down" tax cuts don't abstract the abridgement – they actualize bubbles and airship deficits. Proponents acicular to Reagan's aboriginal tax cut in 1981, claiming it had spurred bread-and-butter growth. But that is annihilation added than "urban legend," Stockman says. The abridgement "did balance afterwards 1982," he says, "but mainly because the Federal Reserve defeated inflation."
In fact, Stockman insists, Bush's tax cuts for the affluent represent a bastardization of Reaganism. "The Republican Affair originally said that abundance comes from the clandestine sector," he says. "But today's Republicans accept become Chamber of Commerce Keynesians – application tax activity as a way of stimulating, boosting, prodding the economy." The Affair of the Rich, in essence, was alms up a askance adaptation of New Accord behavior that laissez-faire Republicans like Reagan had continued opposed.
Spinning the tax giveaways as a bang plan did serve one advantageous function: It helped abstruse the accurate purpose of the Bush tax plan. In an centralized announcement accounting just canicule afterwards the inauguration, O'Neill brash Bush that he had a "great opportunity" for quick activity on his tax cuts if he affected the best for Congress as tax cut vs. recession. "We can get this altercation on our ground," O'Neill wrote, "and stop the drumbeat about a tax cut for the rich."
With no backbone for the specifics of tax policy, Bush deputized Carnality Admiral Dick Cheney to advance through his tax cut for the rich. Already a arrears militarist who accepted that he was "not assertive that the Reagan tax cuts worked," Cheney had emerged from his administering as CEO of Halliburton as a arch apostle for advantageous big corporations and their admiral – even as GOP moderates warned that Bush's tax cut would foreclose bare investments in apprenticeship and infrastructure. "The carnality admiral had no absorption in what I had to say," recalls Chafee. "He ran the appearance appropriate from the beginning, and he suffered no compromise."
As the abridgement worsened, even the president's Treasury secretary grew anxious about the tax cuts. O'Neill pushed Bush to cover a activate apparatus that would rein in the cuts if the projected surpluses bootless to materialize. "The activate was a acceptable abstraction – accepting the anticipation that if things angry bad, we wouldn't accept to about-face advance in a difficult time," O'Neill says now. "But there was never any austere absorption in it" from the Bush administration.
To Chafee, the activity to a activate apparatus seemed to activity a clue about the absolute ambition of the tax cuts: They were brash not to accession the economy, but to force the affectionate of spending cuts championed by Grover Norquist and added small-government activists. His suspicion that the starve-the-beast army was active the cuts was confirmed, he says, by a chat he had while walking the Senate corridors with Trent Lott, afresh the GOP majority leader.
"What's traveling on here?" Chafee asked. Why not aegis the abridgement by adopting a activate mechanism?
Lott angry to Chafee. "We're traveling to asphyxiate the spending," he said. On the stump, Bush absorbed the allowances of his plan by emphasizing how abundant in taxes it would save a abandoned waitress. But the absolute activity was at the top rung of the assets ladder. Over 10 years, the basal fifth of assets earners could apprehend to abridged an added $744. That waitress ability be larboard with abundant banknote to change out the clamp on her Corolla. The top one percent, meanwhile, would accept added than $340,000 on boilerplate – abundant to buy his and chastening Bentleys.
To affectation such audacious inequality, Republicans inaugurated the tax cut with an all-embracing rebate. The waitress would get a $300 check, forth with anybody abroad from Warren Buffett on down. But in reality, the tax cuts were backloaded with allowances for the wealthy. In the aboriginal year of the deal, the top one percent would abridged just seven percent of the tax cuts – but by the time the cuts were set to expire in 2010, the affluent would be accomplishment added than bisected of the windfall. What's more, the cuts were nefariously brash so that small-business owners and upper-middle-class professionals – primarily those earning amid $200,000 and $500,000 a year – would see as abundant as three-quarters of their tax breach breakable by the Alternative Minimum Tax, a accountability Congress originally brash to accumulate affluent humans from cheating on their taxes.
Every year aback the Bush tax cuts were approved, Congress has anesthetized a multibillion "patch" to anticipate this politically almighty accumulation of professionals from accepting denied their tax breaks. But at the time, Cheney acclimated the money "saved" by the AMT claw-back to accounts accession favor abandoned for the rich: a alternation of cuts to the acreage tax culminating in a one-year abolition, set to yield aftereffect in 2010. Abnegation a beneath cher arrangement proposed by Democrats that would accept provided a abiding escape from acreage taxes for all but the richest of the rich, Republicans instead accepted a added big-ticket plan accouterment to the wealthiest 0.25 percent of all estates.
In May 2001, Republicans in the Abode voted in lock footfall to accept the Bush tax cuts, which austere the Senate with the abutment of 45 Republicans and 12 bourgeois Democrats.
But afresh absoluteness intervened. The alpha of the dot-com bubble, followed by the attacks of September 11th, angled the abridgement abrupt into recession. Rather than abandoning course, however, Republicans rallied about accession tax betrayal for the rich. That October, a bill anesthetized by the Abode – and accustomed by Bush – not abandoned alleged for eliminating a law acute that tax-dodging corporations pay at atomic something in taxes, it ordered abatement checks to be cut to accumulated giants for their accomplished taxes. Beneath the bill, 16 companies of the Fortune 500 would accept anniversary accustomed $100 actor or added – including $1.4 billion for IBM, $671 actor for GE and $254 actor for Enron. Democrats in the Senate ultimately sank the bill, bearing a bang amalgamation that continued unemployment allowances for the boilerplate chic and awarded tax incentives to corporations for new investments.
But Republicans kept their eyes on the prize. The afterward year, afterwards the GOP regained ascendancy of the Senate and broadcast its majority in the House, Cheney anon pushed advanced with an even added tax cut for the affluent that O'Neill today describes as "an atrocity."
"We won the midterms," the carnality admiral told O'Neill at the time. "This is our due."
By that point, any bread-and-butter account for acid taxes had vanished. September 11th, the recession and the 2001 tax cuts had plunged the nation $158 billion into the red. The delusion of the $5.6 abundance surplus had vanished – replaced with a anticipation that America would arbor up some $3 abundance in debt by 2012. But rather than put the brakes on tax cuts, as a activate apparatus ability accept done, Cheney was bent to accelerate them, so the affluent would get their money even sooner. To added accolade the wealthiest, Cheney aswell basal to carve taxes on basal assets and accumulated dividends, with bisected of the money traveling to the top one percent.
To defended the new tax cuts, however, Cheney would aboriginal accept to affected activity not abandoned from Alan Greenspan, but from some of Bush's top advisers. The Fed armchair had abandoned presented Cheney with a 20-page econometric assay assuming that aerial deficits acquired by the tax cuts would bore abiding growth. Instead of communicating Greenspan's anxiety to Bush, Cheney tasked a agent alleged Cesar Conda to abstract a announcement adjoin the study. Conda, a aloft tax lobbyist, blithely absolved the projections of the Fed's arch economist as "completely wrong."
In November 2002, at a affair in the White House, the admiral and his top bread-and-butter admiral arranged deeply about a amber table in the Roosevelt Room. With the administration's own forecasts assuming that the abridgement had already regained its footing, one afterwards accession of Bush's assembly articulate the anxiety about the dangers of a new tax cut. "This burns a big aperture in the budget," agent arch of agents Josh Bolten told the president. "The account aperture is accepting deeper," added Daniels, "and we are bulging deficits all the way to the end of your additional term." O'Neill warned the admiral that a "tax cut that allowances mostly affluent investors" could imperil the alpha prosperity. "With the abridgement already improving, this could could could cause an accidental boost," he said. "That's how you get a bubble." Entertaining the choir of doubters, Bush himself accurate advisedly about added cuts for the rich. "Won't the top-rate humans account the most?" he asked. "Didn't we already accord them a breach at the top?"
But Cheney was accepting none of it. If O'Neill warned Bush that America was headed for a "fiscal crisis," the carnality president, sitting at the Treasury secretary's appropriate elbow, absolved him midsentence by citation the ultimate best of Republican tax cuts: "Ronald Reagan accepted that deficits don't matter, Paul."
A accurate apprentice of Reagan would accept accustomed that 2002 was the moment for a tax increase. If his 1981 tax cut overshot the mark, Reagan had put abreast credo and aloft taxes, putting the needs of the country aloft the desires of the wealthy. Bush's ancestor had aswell aloft taxes to abstain casual massive deficits on to approaching generations. Moreover, the Bush administering had already committed the country to a cher war in Afghanistan, and was on the border of advancing Iraq. Historically, Republican and Democratic administrations akin had met the banking burdens of war by adopting taxes. But this was a new Republican Party, one bent to aid the affluent even as it beatific the aggressive account soaring. As Abode Majority Baton Tom DeLay would anon declare, "Nothing is added important in the face of a war than acid taxes."
After the meeting, Cheney set out to abate anyone who stood in the way of the new tax giveaway. He phoned O'Neill and accepted the Treasury secretary's resignation. He aswell dispensed with bread-and-butter adviser Larry Lindsey, whose aboveboard appraisal of the accessible costs of the Iraq War had threatened to derail the tax cut.
Budget-conscious Republicans in Congress who adjoin the tax cuts could not be disposed of – but they could be strong-armed. Voinovich and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, who banned to go forth with cuts of added than $350 billion, were summoned to the White Abode for a affair with Bush and Cheney. "The admiral basal about a abundance dollars if he started with us," recalls Voinovich. "They were alive on us: We charge more, we charge more." The senators captivated out for a abate bill – admitting in hindsight, Voinovich says, there shouldn't accept been any tax cuts. "Just anticipate area we'd be if we'd gone forth with what the admiral wanted," he says, bedlam bitterly. "Where would we be today? Oh, my God."
In the end, Cheney's articulation was the abandoned one that mattered. In April 2003, if the bill accomplished the floor, the Senate apoplectic 50-50. The carnality admiral casting the chief "aye" that confused the tax cut into law. The allowances were even added agee to the affluent than the aboriginal Bush tax cuts. If absolutely phased in, 53 percent of the new cuts went to the top one percent. Those authoritative $10 actor or added pocketed an boilerplate of $1 actor a year – alert the booty they fabricated from the beforehand cuts, and every cent of it borrowed. "It was a deficit-financed tax cut," concedes Hubbard, who chaired Bush's Council of Bread-and-butter Advisers.
The accord advantaged coffer on stocks over alive for a living: The tax bulk the richest pay on their abiding basal assets was arrangement by 25 percent, while their bulk on assets fell by about 60 percent. The move not abandoned fueled belief of Wall Street, it added widened the ample gap amid affluent and poor. "It was a actual annihilative aggregate to accept a civic bread-and-butter activity that angry debt-financed basal assets and afresh burdened the asset at the everyman bulk imaginable," says Stockman. "That contributed, clearly, to the growing alterity in domiciliary assets and wealth."
But Republicans didn't stop there. The afterward year, they anesthetized the little-noticed American Jobs Conception Act. Alleged in the aforementioned Orwellian appearance as Bush's "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives, the 2004 law accustomed corporations to accompany home billions in profits they had stockpiled in adopted tax havens – the actual flight of basal that Bush had adored by torpedoing tax harmonization three years earlier. Beneath the tax amnesty, corporations repatriated $300 billion in profits they had buried offshore. But instead of paying the nominal accumulated tax bulk of 35 percent, they were burdened at just 5.25 percent.
The appellation of the bill notwithstanding, corporations invested about none of their asset in new factories or added measures to actualize the 500,000 jobs that Republicans had promised. In fact, abounding companies that accustomed the bigger tax breach in actuality slashed jobs. Hewlett-Packard laid off 14,500 workers – one blush blooper for every $1 actor in profits it alien aback home from overseas. All told, according to an assay by the Civic Bureau of Bread-and-butter Research, up to 92 percent of the "jobs creation" money was handed out to top admiral and shareholders in a aberration of allotment payments and banal buybacks. And acknowledgment to the GOP's cut on investment assets the antecedent year, affluent individuals who pocketed the adopted profits paid the aforementioned bulk on their bonanza, 15 percent, that a waitress at a booth ability pay on her tips.
When Democrats regained ascendancy of both the Abode and Senate in 2006, they briefly apoplectic the GOP's affair of borrowing from the Treasury to accord tax cuts to the wealthy. But that didn't stop Republicans from award added agency to aid the rich. As the abridgement burst in 2008, the Bush administering acclimated the crisis to accommodate a stealth advertisement to the nation's banks – even those at no accident of failing. Beneath the TARP bailout, overseen by Treasury secretary and aloft Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson, taxpayers were affected to accord banks $254 billion for assets account just $176 billion – a advertisement of $78 billion to the banking sector, including $2.5 billion for Paulson's assembly at Goldman. "Paulson pushed the money into the easily of the banks – no strings attached, no accountability, no transparency," Elizabeth Warren, then-chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, told Rolling Stone endure year.
As with the adopted profits, the banks acclimated the money to band the pockets of admiral and investors – while accomplishing little to acceleration the accretion of Main Street. "We gave an astronomic subsidy to these banking institutions, and they accept not alternate it to the American people," said Warren. "The administering could accept said, 'All right, yield this and accumulate it throughout the economy.' But Paulson never fabricated that a action of demography the money."
Taken together, the Bush years credible the defalcation abaft the approach that tax cuts for the affluent will activation bread-and-butter growth. "Let the affluent get richer and everybody will benefit?" says Stiglitz. "That, empirically, is wrong. It's a aesthetics of trickle-down economics that's belied by the facts." Bush and Cheney accepted already and for all that tax cuts for the affluent aftermath abandoned two things: "lower advance and greater inequality."
The GOP's agitated handouts to the affluent during the Bush era coincided with the weakest bread-and-butter amplification aback Apple War II – and the abandoned one in avant-garde American history in which the accomplishment of alive families in actuality fell and abjection increased. And what little amplification there was beneath Bush culminated in the affliction budgetary crisis aback the Abundant Depression. "The accident was larboard by Dick Cheney, Grover Norquist and the gang," says Chafee. "This was their doing."
By active the abridgement into the ditch, Republicans larboard the next admiral little best but to drive up deficits in the abbreviate appellation by ablution a massive attack of federal spending to area off a all-around depression. But even the $787 billion bang engineered by Admiral Obama was bedridden by his predecessor's advancing betrayal to the wealthy: Republicans insisted that about 10 percent of every bang dollar be adherent to costs the anniversary "patch" to the Alternative Minimum Tax – the off-budget bequest of Bush's tax cuts for the rich. This was a $70 billion advertisement that aggrandized the bulk of the bang amalgamation afterwards aesthetic annihilation – added than the paychecks of affluent Americans.
From the alpha of the Obama presidency, in fact, Republicans accept affianced in a calculated, all-embracing attack to assure the tax privileges of the wealthiest Americans. Their cold was fabricated absolute by Rep. Eric Cantor during the acme of the bang debate: "No Tax Increases to Pay for Spending" declared one ammo point on Cantor's website. "House Republicans are insisting that any bang amalgamation cover a accouterment precluding any tax increases, now or in the future, to pay for this new spending." Accepting racked up the bigger deficits in American history, Republicans al of a abrupt activate it expedient to acknowledgment to their old-school address of deficit-bashing. "Under Bush, they had a adventure about deficits not mattering," says Michael Ettlinger, who directs bread-and-butter activity at the Center for American Progress. "Then, all of a abrupt Obama becomes president, and deficits bulk again."
The action accomplished a agitation angle over bloom affliction reform. To absolutely accept the abyss of the GOP's accepted activity to Obamacare, it's acute to accept how the ameliorate is financed: The abandoned bigger antecedent of funds comes from accretion Medicare taxes on the affluent – including new taxes on investment income. According to the Tax Activity Center, Americans who accomplish added than $1 actor a year will pay an added $37,381 in anniversary taxes beneath the plan. The top 400 taxpayers would accord even more: an boilerplate of $11 actor each.
Rarely in American history has a tax so finer targeted the top one percent. "It took Republicans about four months to bulk out how abundant they hated it," says McIntyre, admiral of Citizens for Tax Justice. Republican acerbity over the president's bloom affliction plan has far beneath to do with the admeasurement of government or the claim of the abandoned authorization than the abstract to the broker class. If Obamacare charcoal in abode and the Bush cuts for the affluent expire as planned, top earners will be paying a tax of 23.8 percent on basal assets – added than they accept at any time aback Clinton cut the basal assets tax in 1997. Bloom affliction reform, griped The Wall Street Journal, was annihilation but a "sneaky way" for Democrats to allowance a "war on 'the rich.'"
A key aspect of the GOP's war on the poor was anchored by the abruptness acclamation of Scott Brown to alter Ted Kennedy in the Senate in January 2010. As a candidate, Brown had fabricated his high-mileage GMC auto barter the brilliant of his attack commercials. "I adulation this old truck," he said. "It's brought me afterpiece to the people." But Brown's absolute adherence was to his affluent donors: the billionaire Koch brothers, who bankrolled the Tea Party, and the banking interests who fabricated a last-minute investment of added than $450,000 to actuate Brown into office.
As anon as he was affidavit in, Brown set about hollowing out the alleged Volcker Rule, which was brash to bar big banking institutions from application their own money to accomplish risky, abstract bets on the market. By accordant to accommodate Democrats with the acute 60th vote on accounts reform, Brown anchored an absolution from the trading ban for alternate funds and insurers – a move anon benefiting Massachusetts-based banking giants like Fidelity and MassMutual. Brown aswell insisted that the Wall Street giants who acquired the banking collapse – banks like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase – be accustomed to abide application taxpayer-subsidized basal to activity on barrier funds and private-equity deals. Aloft Fed armchair Paul Volcker was furious: "Allowing a coffer to advance in a abstract fund," he said, "goes adjoin the actual absorbed of the bill."
But Brown wasn't done. At the 11th hour, he affected Democrats to fasten a tax on big banks and barrier funds that was brash to accomplish $19 billion to pay for the costs of banking reform. As a result, consumers and babyish banks had to aces up the tab. Brown, meanwhile, was abundantly adored for his efforts on account of Wall Street: During a three-week aeon at the acme of negotiations, he raked in $140,000 in attack banknote from big banking firms, including Fidelity and MassMutual, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.
When Republicans won aback ascendancy of the Abode in endure year's midterm elections, they followed Brown's advance and confused apace to abandon their Tea Affair backers by active up added deficits on account of the rich. Within canicule of the election, Republicans not abandoned anchored a two-year addendum of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, they aswell enabled America's richest breed to accede millions of dollars afterwards paying a dime in taxes. All told, the GOP's two favors for the party's bigger donors were anchored in a lame-duck arrangement that adds accession $858 billion to the debt – an bulk greater than the aboriginal bang plan the Republicans adjoin so bitterly.
First, the GOP filibustered a Democrat-led accomplishment to extend the Bush tax cuts on abandoned the aboriginal $250,000 of income. The affair leadership's awkward attitude – accurate by about a third of all voters – angry $90 billion over to the wealthiest Americans. It aswell set a antecedent for added extensions that would bulk about $1 abundance over the next decade. At the aforementioned time, the GOP collection through a accord that in actuality raised taxes for couples who accomplish beneath than $40,000 a year – and afresh angry abundant of the added banknote over to couples who acquire added than $200,000. Obama agreed to this massive alteration of abundance in adjustment to absorb the Bush tax cuts for the boilerplate chic – but the abandoned added cogent affair he got in acknowledgment was a one-year addendum of abandoned allowances for the abiding unemployed.
But even the GOP's big payday for the affluent pales in allegory to the advertisement that Republicans anchored by gutting the acreage tax. With the cessation of the Bush tax cuts, the bequest tax was set to breeze aback to its Clinton-era standard: exempting the aboriginal $1 actor of all estates from taxation, and dispatch up the tax bulk on the wealthiest estates to 55 percent. Instead, Obama agreed to accession the absolution to $5 actor and lower the top tax bulk to 35 percent – an credible horse barter accepted by the Senate's second-ranking Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, who afresh accustomed the president's nuclear-stockpile accord with Russia to move advanced in the Senate.
Shockingly, the accord in actuality aperitive the arrangement the super-rich had accustomed in 2009, enabling the brood to the richest 0.25 percent of estates to abridged an added $23 billion they would accept contrarily owed in taxes beneath Bush. In fact, beneath the agreement Kyl demanded, the federal government will absorb added to annihilate or cut taxes for 100,000 affluent humans than it will to extend unemployment allowances for 7 million Americans.
In a little-noticed detail, the two-year accord aswell created a artifice that allows the wealthiest couples to canyon on $10 actor to a adolescent today – while they're still active – afterwards paying a penny of tax. That agency the affluent can offload their abundance to their accouchement afore it increases in amount – artifice college acreage taxes in the future. "In the next two years," one tax advocate crowed to The Wall Street Journal, "wealthy humans accept an aberrant befalling to advance a lot of the amount of their assets out of the estate-tax system." According to tax historians, the new rules actualize the a lot of acceptable tax ambiance for abundance transfers for the super-rich aback 1931.
And that was just the alpha of the budget-busting handouts the GOP accepted for the rich. In April, Republicans in the Abode anesthetized a account that would accept arrangement assets taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans to just 25 percent – a $3 abundance betrayal that would accept been financed by acceleration abroad costs for approaching retirees on Medicare. Top Republicans like Cantor accept aswell pushed for a epitomize of the American Jobs Conception Act – acknowledging a new tax absolution that would acquiesce accumulated giants like Angel and Pfizer to accompany home $1.4 abundance in adopted profits that would be burdened at just 5.25 percent – a favor for the affluent that would accomplish accession $79 billion in deficits. "At the aforementioned time they're talking about these big arrears problems, active about saying, 'We're broke,' they're advertent one of the a lot of arrant tax giveaways in contempo memory," says Greenstein of the Center on Account and Activity Priorities. "The abeyant asset assets are above astronomic – and the lion's allotment would go to shareholders of these big corporations and their executives."
Never apperception that the antecedent tax absolution in 2004 created about no new jobs, as accumulated admiral agilely pocketed the asset for themselves: Republicans are already afresh claiming that the tax absolution will accredit corporations to absorb their repatriated abundance putting Americans aback to work. Mitt Romney, the GOP presidential front-runner, promises that the flood of accumulated banknote will accomplish "hundreds of bags if not millions – of good, permanent, private-sector jobs." That flies in the face of basal economics, accustomed that accumulated America is already sitting on hundreds of billions in calm banknote reserves. What the tax absolution would do, however, is accession banal prices. According to an assay by JP Morgan, as abundant as two-thirds of the $1.4 abundance that would be brought aback into the country would go to banal "buybacks and dividends" rather than "new factories, new jobs and new equipment," as Romney claims.
JP Morgan has a big pale in the agitation – as do adolescent bank-bailout beneficiaries Citigroup, Coffer of America and Goldman Sachs. Combined, the four banking giants accept $87 billion in untaxed profits stockpiled offshore. That's agnate to the accumulated adopted profits of biologic giants Pfizer and Merck at $89 billion. Tech giants Cisco and Microsoft accept added than $61 billion they'd like to accompany home, while Big Oil companies Exxon and Chevron accept $56 billion. The aggregation with the a lot of to gain, by far – with offshored affluence of $94 billion – is accumulated America's a lot of belled tax scofflaw, GE.
Romney's battling for the GOP nomination, Rick Perry, has aswell accustomed the tax absolution for behemothic corporations. But for Perry, the angle doesn't go far abundant on account of the rich. "Why not allocution about how you are traveling to repatriate those dollars at a essentially lower bulk than 35 percent?" Perry said recently, ambiguous in New Hampshire. "Like zero."
In September, Perry went even further, proposing a collapsed tax that would yield a aciculate chaw out of the paychecks of the atomic Americans – while slashing taxes by added than 40 percent for the wealthiest. If confronted by a anchorman over the actuality that his plan would accord millions to the rich, Perry replied: "I don't affliction about that." His plan is about as astern as Herman Cain's aboriginal 9-9-9 plan, which alleged for increasing taxes on 84 percent of Americans – binding $4,400 a year out of every accepted brace to accounts a $455,000 tax cut for millionaires. What's more, both Perry and Cain wish to abate the acreage tax absolutely and annihilate all taxes on basal gains. A agnate plan by Michele Bachmann would accredit 23,000 millionaires to pay no taxes at all – while acceptance the top 400 earners to abridged about two-thirds of their assets tax-free, and afresh canyon those abundance on to their brood afterwards paying a penny. "It's madness," says Stiglitz. "And it is alarming to the budgetary order. The affluent apperceive actual able-bodied how to catechumen accustomed assets to basal assets income."
The Republican aberration for advantageous the affluent with tax cuts has become so angled that the accustomed rules of allotment no best assume to apply. Arguing for an addendum of the Bush tax cuts, Sen. Kyl spelled out what could able-bodied serve as the Affair of the Rich's credo: "You should never accept to account the bulk of a advised accommodation to abate tax ante on Americans." The aforementioned rule, of course, doesn't administer to spending for those in need: At the time he alleged for added borrowing on account of the rich, Kyl was aswell angry to abjure unemployment allowances to 5 actor Americans. "Continuing to pay humans unemployment compensation," he scoffed, "is a bridle for them to seek new work."
In retrospect, the accurate champ of the midterm elections endure year was not the Tea Party, or even Speaker of the Abode John Boehner. It was Grover Norquist.
"What has happened over the endure two years is that Grover now has soldiers in the field," says Bartlett, the artist of the Reagan tax cuts. "These Tea Affair people, in effect, yield their orders from him." Indeed, a almanac 98 percent of Abode Republicans accept now active Norquist's anti-tax agreement – which includes a second, abstruse accouterment that played a key role in the debt-ceiling debacle. In accession to vowing not to accession taxes, politicians who assurance the agreement affiance to use any acquirement generated by catastrophe a tax subsidy to anon accounts – that's appropriate – added tax cuts.
Norquist insists the admeasurement is all-important to force Congress to rein in spending. "I'm not focused on the deficit," he says. "The metric that affairs is befitting spending down." But in the absolute world, the aftereffect of Norquist's adjuration is to anticipate the government from acid the arrears by catastrophe tax breach to the rich. All told, tax breach bulk the government $1.2 abundance anniversary year – far added than aegis spending ($744 billion), Medicare and Medicaid ($719 billion) or Amusing Aegis ($701 billion). And a lot of of the breach – anticipate of them as government subsidies delivered through the tax cipher – go to the wealthy. The richest one percent of Americans accept a 13.5 percent accession in their incomes from such subsidies – about bifold the account the basal 80 percent receives. Beneath Norquist's pledge, assembly are banned from catastrophe any affectionate of tax breach – mortgage deductions for affluence vacation homes, subsidies for behemothic oil companies, lower tax ante for private-equity millionaires – afterwards application the money to pay for accession tax cut. "If you can't get rid of tax expenditures – if old Grover is traveling to alarm that a 'tax increase' – it's not just ludicrous, it's deception," says Simpson, the aloft GOP senator.
Ludicrous or not, Norquist's attrition on tax expenditures dead the "grand bargain" that Admiral Obama proposed during the debt-ceiling standoff. In acknowledgment for $1 abundance in cuts to amusing spending and civic security, additional accession $650 billion in reductions to entitlements like Medicare, Obama asked Republicans to get rid of $1.2 abundance in careless tax subsidies. "Democrats weren't talking about adopting taxes – they were talking about eliminating tax expenditures, for God's sakes!" says Voinovich. "Many of them should accept been abandoned a continued time ago." But with so abounding Republicans committed to Norquist's anti-revenue pledge, Boehner was affected to airing abroad from the deal.
"Grover's got 'em terrified," says Simpson. "I consistently acquaint Republicans, 'Hell, Grover can't annihilate ya. He can't bake down your house. The abandoned affair he can do to you is defeat you in re-election – and if re-election agency added to you than your country, afresh you shouldn't be in the legislature.'"
The action over the debt beam underscores the GOP's accelerated change into the Affair of the Rich. The account accumulation projected from the accommodation that Republicans anguish up accordant to – $2.1 abundance – will not even activate to pay for costs incurred by the Bush tax cuts. In their aboriginal decade alone, the cuts anguish up depriving the Treasury of $2.5 abundance – with 38 percent of the money now traveling to the richest one percent of Americans. For all their allocution of acid the arrears in contempo years, Republicans accept spent far added of the public's money to angel the wealthy.
Indeed, aback Republicans began their tax-cut affair in 1997, they accept succeeded in authoritative the affluent abundant richer. While the boilerplate assets for the basal 90 percent of taxpayers has remained basically collapsed over the accomplished 15 years, those in the top 0.01 percent accept credible their incomes added than double, to $36 actor a year. Translated into wages, that agency a lot of Americans accept accustomed a accession of $1.50 an hour aback the GOP began acid taxes during the Gingrich era. The a lot of aristocratic sliver of American society, meanwhile, saw their pay arise by $10,000 an hour.
America became a abundant nation with a affluent boilerplate chic on the backbone of a accelerating tax cipher – one that demands the a lot of of those who account a lot of from our society. But the Affair of the Affluent has succeeded in breaking the aback of that ideal. Today, says Johnston, "the tax arrangement ceases to be accelerating if you get to the actual top of the wealthiest one percent." Aloft that marker, the richer you get, the lower your about tax burden. "We accept confused against a plutocracy," Warren Buffett warned in a contempo interview. "As humans accept gotten richer and richer, they accept been advantaged by taxation – and accept gotten richer to a greater degree."
Far from creating the trickle-down economics promised by Reagan, the behavior pursued by the avant-garde Republican Affair are gusher up. Beneath the administration of Majority Baton Eric Cantor, the House's radicalized GOP conclave is blame a bloodthirsty calendar for a new gilded age. Every move that Republicans accomplish – whether it's to gut customer protections, cycle aback ecology regulations, angel behemothic agribusinesses, abate bloom affliction ameliorate or just drill, baby, assignment – is constant with a abandoned overarching agenda: to adorn the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations, even if it requires borrowing from China, abrasion civic security, dismantling Medicare and ambitious the boilerplate class. With the nation still mired in the affliction banking crisis aback the 1930s, Republicans accept actually abandoned the one banking activity with a accurate almanac of putting the country aback on a added affluent footing. "You apprehend the Republicans say that you don't cartel accession taxes in a anemic economy," says Stockman. "Ronald Reagan did – three times." Not even the abasement of America's debt – which placed the world's abandoned superpower on acclaim par with New Zealand and Belgium – has accustomed GOP leaders could could cause to amend their pro-wealth jihad. In August, as the alleged Supercommittee began its plan to complete the debt-ceiling accord by abbreviation approaching deficits by accession $1.5 trillion, Cantor issued the Affair of the Rich's boot orders, insisting that Republicans not catch beneath the "tremendous pressure" to backpack taxes and instead ambition spending cuts in "mandatory programs."
The agreement of the board offers little achievement that Congress will authority the affluent answerable for their allotment of the arrears burden. While Democrats appointed deal-oriented centrists like Sen. Max Baucus to the committee, Republicans abounding it with anti-revenue hard-liners, including Sens. Jon Kyl and Pat Toomey, who acclimated to run the Club for Advance – an accessory of Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform. "Your wallet is safe," Norquist tweeted afterwards the Republican agenda was announced.
In an account with Rolling Stone, Norquist expresses pride that the GOP has been so thoroughly adapted aback the canicule of Reagan. "It's a altered Republican Affair now," he says. Norquist even goes so far as to allegorize the affectionate of Republicans accepted in Reagan's day – those accommodating to accession taxes to strengthen the abridgement – to segregationists. The "modern Republican Party," he says, would no eventually admit a revenue-raiser than the "modern Democratic Affair would admit George Wallace."
Norquist expresses no ache at the moral appulse of his activity – accouterment tax favors for the affluent that are paid for by acid casework to those who absolutely charge them. "I accept acquisitiveness and envy," Norquist says. "The abstraction that somebody's authoritative money and you wish to abduct some of it? That's an absorbing idea. But it's not morality. It's absolutely not justice."
Such agitator address – equating taxation with annexation – is absolutely the affectionate of allocution that dismays accepted Republicans. Abounding of those who fought for years at the ancillary of Ronald Reagan say they no best admit acceptable GOP ethics in the new Republican Party. Angry for the rich, afterwards all, is not the aforementioned as advancement the right.
"You can attending up my record: On abnegation and taxes I was bigger than Jesse Helms," says Simpson, the aloft senator. "But whatever happened to accepted sense? Humans are traveling to attending about in 5 or 10 years and say, 'Whatever happened to the things that fabricated me comfortable? That fabricated our streets and schools acceptable things?' And they'll look, hopefully, at Grover Norquist. I can say to you with centermost sincerity: If this country and this assembly are in chains to Grover Norquist, we haven't got a prayer."
This adventure is from the November 24, 2011 affair of Rolling Stone.
Related
• Grover Norquist: The Billionaires' Best Friend
• The Enablers: Democrats On Board With the Affair of the Rich
• Must-Read Books on the GOP and the One Percent
• Timeline: How the GOP Became the Affair of the Rich
From The Archives Affair 1144: November 24, 2011
