| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Two leaders, one goal, to find common ground. | |
| This fall, Ceasefire, on the network that doesn't take sides, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Democracy is always an unfinished creation. | ||
| Democracy is worth dying for. | ||
| Democracy belongs to us all. | ||
| We are here in the sanctuary of democracy. | ||
| Great responsibilities fall once again to the great democracies. | ||
| American democracy is bigger than any one person. | ||
| Freedom and democracy must be constantly guarded and protected. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are still at our core a democracy. | |
| This is also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| We are going to be discussing the Republican budget and President Trump's economic policy with Grover Norquist. | ||
| He's the president of Americans for Tax Reform. | ||
| Mr. Norquist, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good to be with you. | |
| Just start by reminding us about your organization, the mission, and the funding. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Americans for Tax Reform was created in 1985 at the request of President Reagan. | ||
| I became the president of it. | ||
| And the goal was to pass the Tax Reform Act of 1986. | ||
| So we were there for two years. | ||
| As we did it, we realized if you took the rates down, which the Republicans and Democrats both agreed to do back then to a top rate of 27, 28 percent, that really broadened the base and maybe the rates would drift up again. | ||
| So we created a pledge, which was that one would that a candidate would oppose any tax increase and particularly any rate increases in the future. | ||
| So we'd protect tax reform. | ||
| We got 100 congressmen to sign it and 20 senators. | ||
| And with that assurance, people felt comfortable at the end of the day that it wasn't going to turn into a tax increase when it went into the smoke-filled rooms. | ||
| And in fact, it wasn't. | ||
| It was a small tax cut. | ||
| But it was really just a tax reform, which reduced rates, got rid of a lot of deductions and credits. | ||
| Very good for economic growth. | ||
| And the pledge was so powerful, people in campaigns said, let me make it clear, I'm never raising taxes. | ||
| I'm not going to do that. | ||
| And they put it in writing, you know, one sentence commitment. | ||
| It was so powerful that we kept that going. | ||
| It actually is the centerpiece of what Americans for Tax Reform does at the federal level, offering the pledge to all candidates. | ||
| Most Republicans have signed the pledge. | ||
| And at the state level, two-thirds of all the governors, Republican governors, have signed the pledge. | ||
| We've had some Democrats in the past sign the pledge. | ||
| Back in 94, when the Republicans took the House and Senate, there were five Democrats in the House who took the pledge and two Democrats in the Senate. | ||
| All of them became Republicans after that election. | ||
| And your funding? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We get support from Americans. | |
| We run Americans for Tax from ATR.org and we welcome contributions. | ||
| You've been doing this since 1985? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, yeah. | |
| That's a long time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it has been. | |
| But there are fights at the state level as well as at the federal level. | ||
| And actually, right now, some of the most exciting things that are happening on tax policy are state reforms. | ||
| So let's talk about what's happening right now in the House, the GOP reconciliation bill, pass the budget committee Sunday night. | ||
| House rules are going to take it up early tomorrow morning, middle of the night, depending on where you are in the country. | ||
| Here's what a statement from the Freedom Caucus said about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Quote, we face a serious fiscal crisis. | |
| We must put an end to Washington's wasteful spending now. | ||
| What are your thoughts on spending levels? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, one should take spending down as much as one can in any given election. | |
| You need to double check and see where are the votes for it in the House, where are the votes in the Senate. | ||
| Is it something you can explain to people? | ||
| And you move on that to reduce spending. | ||
| And hopefully you, the best way to reduce spending is to reform government. | ||
| There's a reform in Medicare that they're putting in that will slow the growth. | ||
| Medicare spending will go up every year. | ||
| It's not a cut in any way. | ||
| But it will say, you know, We're going to ask that people be citizens. | ||
| We're going to ask that people either have jobs or be looking for jobs. | ||
| Medicare was Medicaid, Medicaid, Medicaid, sorry, I don't mean to confuse it. | ||
| Medicaid was set up for people with jobs who didn't have health care, and it got expanded under Obama. | ||
| So reforming that so that we don't have fraud is a way to save a lot of money, or block granting it to the states, as Clinton did. | ||
| He block granted welfare, aid to families with dependent children, out to the 50 states and said, we're not going to tell you how to run it. | ||
| You do that. | ||
| And they saved 30 to 40 percent. | ||
| I mean, that was Clinton's policy that he signed the bill. | ||
| The 2017 Trump tax cuts, those are. | ||
| I can see you getting excited about that. | ||
| Why do you think that's so important to make those permanent? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, it's important to make them permanent because anybody making a decision, whether it's an individual or a business deciding do we hire three more people, do we buy a new truck, do we build a new factory? | |
| You really need to know not only what taxes are today, but what will they be in five years, ten years, and 50 years. | ||
| Factories last a long time, equipment lasts a long time. | ||
| When you hire somebody, that's often a very long-time commitment, and you need to know what the rules of the road are going to be. | ||
| So what was done was you can only do about 10 years at that point. | ||
| We're now going to make permanent all the parts of that. | ||
| I'm not sure everybody focuses as much as they perhaps should, because it's difficult. | ||
| But here's what happened in 2017. | ||
| Here's what will be made permanent. | ||
| There were across the board tax reduction for all individuals. | ||
| If you paid income taxes, your rate went down. | ||
| Highest income, lowest income. | ||
| There was tax simplification because it expanded the tax, the standard deduction for taxes. | ||
| And they doubled it. | ||
| And it's going to go up again in this case. | ||
| That's why 90% of Americans today don't have to itemize and bring all their little deductions in. | ||
| We used to have many more people had to do that, but the standard deduction was raised so high, it was doubled, so that most people don't. | ||
| But 90% don't have to. | ||
| The child tax credit was doubled. | ||
| It's going to go up another $500. | ||
| We expanded the tax cuts for small businesses. | ||
| A lot of businesses aren't incorporated. | ||
| It's not a corporation. | ||
| It's an individual or a family that through their own personal tax return, they pay the company. | ||
| And you can have some good mid-sized certainty with dozens and dozens or hundreds of people working for it, but it's paid through the individual rate. | ||
| The rate for businesses that pay that. | ||
| A lot of those are smaller businesses. | ||
| They certainly started smaller businesses. | ||
| That was important and will continue. | ||
| Death tax. | ||
| Fewer people are subjected to the death tax. | ||
| Fewer farms, fewer small businesses will be torn in half because they move that number up again and make it more permanent. | ||
| There's 100% business expensing. | ||
| What this means is if a company said, well, we'd like to buy a new set of machinery to make everybody here more productive. | ||
| And if you're more productive, you can produce more and you can get paid more. | ||
| You can demand to be paid more because you can produce more here or someplace else. | ||
| So the more capital, the more investment per worker, the higher the wages. | ||
| And there's actually a percentage you can figure out as you put more capital behind a worker, assuming you do it smart, you can actually see the wages go up. | ||
| We saw that dramatically in the first year of the Trump tax cut took effect. | ||
| Median income for Family of Four and Median Income Dead Center went up 6.8%. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because all that capital flowed into those folks. | ||
| Then there are the new ones, 100% expensing for new factories, a new idea of Trump this time around, in addition. | ||
| No tax on tips, both for people who work at restaurants, for independent contractors, Uber, Lyft, and so on. | ||
| Those taxes will not be, those tips will not be taxed. | ||
| No tax on overtime. | ||
| They'll be making some move on that as well. | ||
| reducing taxes on seniors it also gets rid of how does it reduce taxes on seniors Through reducing taxes on Social Security. | ||
| They're moving to not tax Social Security. | ||
| I don't know how far they're going to get this time around, but they're beginning the process of going to not taxing Social Security. | ||
| There's also those 1099 things. | ||
| If you use Venmo, under Obama did this, but then it was so unpopular he repealed it. | ||
| Biden did it and didn't care how unpopular it was. | ||
| A lot of people buy and sell things through Venmo. | ||
| They were going to make you put in a piece of paper for every time you did that. | ||
| And anytime you got some money in, three of you get together and pay your rent together, and two of you Venmo to the other guy, the third guy could get stuck with that as income, unless he kept all his receipts that showed this was, we're all getting together to pay the rent or dinner somewhere. | ||
| So that's a huge paper nonsense that's being repealed in this package. | ||
| Well, let me ask you, I mean, I know that there's a lot there, but this is what the Wall Street Journal says. | ||
| And it says about the $36 trillion in debt. | ||
| It says the stark math on the GOP tax plan. | ||
| It doesn't cut the deficit. | ||
| It says House Republicans advance the bill as budget analysts across the political spectrum warn the proposal worsens the U.S. fiscal picture. | ||
| What do you say to that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, we're doing several things in this budget. | |
| We're reducing taxes in order to have more growth. | ||
| If you grow it 3% a year instead of 2% a year, you bring the deficit down $3.5 trillion with more revenue coming in and with less spending on welfare as more people have jobs. | ||
| Historically, is that how it works? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, these are CBO numbers. | |
| And this is what's whenever you've got a lot of people. | ||
| So the farther you bring down taxes, the better the economic growth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, certain taxes are more, if you cut the cigarette tax by 10 cents, that's not going to affect economic growth. | |
| You take the taxes on individual wages, yes, you'll get more economic growth. | ||
| You take the taxes on investment and savings, you'll get more growth. | ||
| And the corporate income tax, when we took the rate from, one of the things that people need to remember is we took our rate, corporate rate, before Trump was president, was 35%. | ||
| That is the highest in the world. | ||
| Communist China was 25%. | ||
| We were taxing our businesses 35%. | ||
| China was 25. | ||
| The European average was under 25. | ||
| We were taxing higher than Europe, worse than Europe. | ||
| No country had a tax rate higher than our 35%. | ||
| That was brought down to 21. | ||
| And they said, oh, look at all the money that will lose. | ||
| It actually gained revenue as a result of more growth and more jobs. | ||
| And remember when we used to have inversions, people during the Obama years, companies were leaving America being bought by Canadian firms or European firms. | ||
| And those were inversions, and Obama said they were unpatriotic because they're being bought by other people. | ||
| A company purchased by a Canadian American company, purchased by somebody in Canada, was worth more because of our tax laws. | ||
| We had tax laws so stupid, they made our own companies worth less. | ||
| We took that rate down to 21. | ||
| Trump wants to take it to 15. | ||
| And in that, tremendous economic growth flowed. | ||
| I think it is very important we go all the way to 15. | ||
| So these have been extremely helpful for economic growth. |