Grover Norquist defends the "One Big Beautiful Bill," highlighting permanent tax cuts that lowered corporate rates from 35% to 21% and introduced new provisions like immediate business investment expensing. He counters Democratic claims of elite favoritism by arguing taxes ultimately burden consumers, citing historical examples where wealth-targeted levies hurt the poor. Norquist attributes a projected $4.7 trillion deficit increase to excessive spending rather than tax policy, framing Republicans as a "leave-us-alone coalition" opposed to the Democratic "takings coalition." The segment concludes with listener questions regarding unfunded wars and national debt. [Automatically generated summary]
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Taxing Productivity vs Children00:09:17
At C-SPAN.org.
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This is Grover Norquist back on our program.
He's president of Americans for Tax Reform talking about economic policy.
Mr. Norquist, good morning.
Hey, good to be with you.
I suppose that the week of April 15th, tax time, this is a big time for your organization.
The president says that more people are getting more money back this year.
Do you believe that's the case?
And what's the overall economic impact from what was passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill?
Sure.
The One Big Beautiful Bill took the tax cut, the Republican tax cut from the first Trump term and made it permanent and then added some things.
Very important.
It cut tax rates for every single American.
If you pay taxes, your tax rate went down.
It reduced tax rates for businesses.
We used to have a 35% corporate rate.
China was at 15, is at 15 for anything that matters.
We were higher than France.
Dumber than France is not where you want to be on tax policy at 35.
That was brought down to 21, which makes us okay competitive.
The president, and I certainly agree, said we should go to 15 to be very competitive with the rest of the world, China to start with.
You add to that that business investment is now expensed.
It's not depreciated over many, many years.
So it's easier and less costly for business to create new jobs and make people more productive with better equipment, which is very important for economic growth.
Growth comes from productivity plus the number of people working.
That's the growth.
And we need to encourage, or rather not discourage, investment in productivity.
So all of those things in the Big Beautiful bill added to it this time around was no tax on the first $25,000 worth of tips.
Very important for a lot of independent contractors.
More and more Americans don't want to work for a boss.
They want to be their own boss, whether it's Airbnb or Uber or any of the many companies that you can work with or independent as independent contractors.
You decide your hours.
And a lot of that is tipped work.
And so that's a very big step forward.
It reduces the taxes on Social Security.
A lot of very important pro-growth policies in that.
Plus the Trump accounts, the Trumpaccounts.gov.
People have focused on that for four years, if you have a child in last year, this year, next two years, the government will put $1,000 in an account like a 401k in IRA for a child.
That's interesting.
But more important is that parents can put up to $5,000 each year up until age 18.
If you think, oh, my kids are all born, this isn't me.
Oh, yes, it is.
This is an IRA for kids that you can help your child start saving.
And you see that charities are deciding to do this too with the Dell Foundation, where they're giving $6 plus trillion dollars to 25 million different accounts to help people start their first account for their children.
Again, it doesn't have to be born this year or last year.
I know everyone focuses on that.
The important part is anybody under 18 every year.
Companies are now giving it as a benefit as well.
Let me ask you about the initial things you said.
And the Democratic refrain consistently has been because of the One Big Beautiful bill that it benefits those who are the high earners.
It doesn't necessarily benefit the middle class and it benefits corporations.
What's your argument to that, or at least your response to that?
Well, that's what the Democrats say about all tax reductions.
When you tax a business, And the Democrats are now talking about raising the tax on small businesses, medium-sized businesses, 12%.
Take it up to 50%.
And in California, it'll be 60%.
Small businesses are incorporated as individuals.
They're not corporations.
They're subchapter S corporations, pastors.
Go down Main Street, that's who they want to raise taxes on.
But even, let's say the corporate income tax.
When you go to the grocery store and you pay the sales tax and the company pays the corporate income tax for the, where do they get the money from?
When you buy potatoes, when you buy milk, consumers pay the corporate income tax.
The only reason the Democrats like the corporate income tax is it hides who pays it.
Average citizens pay it.
They like to pretend it's somebody else, but corporations, there's no Mr. General Motors.
There isn't.
There are people who buy cars.
They think there's a Mr. General Motors smoking cigars and going on cruises on New York somewhere.
No, that's not the case.
But the consistently is it still benefits some more than others.
Not sums are in the higher income brackets.
No, if you're, well, first of all, it damages consumers and about 70% of it, different economists look at it different ways, but everybody recognizes consumers pay most of it and workers pay a great deal of it.
Because if you're in a very competitive industry and they add this tax to you and you're competing with the rest of the world, wages have to go down.
There's no extra money to be had there.
That's where they pay the taxes out of.
It hurts consumers, it hurts workers.
When people understand that, the Democrats will have to come up with a new gig.
The other one is that you're right.
They say, oh, it's the rich people.
Remember, the Kamala Harris's promise when she ran against the Republicans was she was going to repeal the entire Republican tax cut.
The $1,000 per child tax credit, gone.
The doubling of the standard deduction, not the first $12,000, but the first $24,000 is just gone.
The taxes they want hit middle-income people devastatingly.
And that was what they ran on.
They all voted against increasing the per-child tax credit, against doubling the standard deduction, against making workers more productive with more assets flowing into veteran computers and everything else that people work with, bigger trucks, bigger machines.
So yes, that's what the Democrats always say, but it's not true.
They promised us that when they put the income tax in in 1913, to go back a little bit.
Well, let me show you.
I want the callers to get in there.
202-748-8001 for Republicans.
202-748-8000 for Democrats and Independents.
202-748-8002.
If you want to make your questions or comments to Grover Norquist.
Go ahead.
In 250 years ago, when they did this Declaration of Independence, colonies, when we were a colony, we were paying 2% of our income.
In London, the Brits were paying 20%.
We were paying 2%.
And they thought they should raise taxes on the Americans.
So we started shooting at them, and they left.
And until about 1913, we averaged 2%, sometimes 3% of our income went to government.
It's now closer to 30%.
But for most of our life as a country, both as a colony and as a country, we worked on 2% to 3%.
When they put the personal income tax in 1913, they promised it was just for the rich.
The top rate was 7%.
And to get that top rate, you had to be earning $11 million in a year in today's dollars.
Today, the 7% is half of the bottom rate.
So they say they're going to tax the rich, but then they take the tax and squish it onto everybody.
And they do that on tax after tax after tax.
The Spanish-American War was paid for with a tax on rich people.
Really?
Yes.
On phones.
Those only rich people had phones in 1980, 1898.
$4,000 to buy a phone, rich people.
Pretty quickly, everyone in the country had the phone, and that tax lasted 100 years and was a very regressive tax.
So with inflation and with their policies, the Democrats start with rich people.
They haven't finished the sentence.
We're going to tax the rich first.
You had our friend Clinton promised he wouldn't raise taxes on anyone who earned less than $150,000.
First target, gasoline, people who drive cars.
Obama never raised tax on anyone who makes less than $250,000.
First target, cigarette smokers, average income, $30,000 a year.
People who are addicted, they see the taxes, who have low incomes.
Thank you, Mr. Obama, for being so concerned that you're only going to tax rich people.
No, they're going to take the money anywhere they can get it.
One of the other things that, because of the reduced revenue, is what ultimately does when it comes to funding things of the federal budget.
It was Washington Democrat Patty Murray who asked CBO Director Phil Swagel about the impact of the One Big Beautiful bill on revenues.
She posted a quick video on it.
I want you to watch it, get your response.
Sure.
Targeting the Wrong Voters00:02:42
What single piece of legislation has contributed the most to increasing the debt in like the last decade?
The single piece of legislation is the 2025 Reconciliation Act.
And that increased the deficit by $4.7 trillion over 10 years, including the interest costs and the dynamic feedback.
Right.
So it was the biggest debt driver in a decade.
Just for the record, every Democrat opposed it, every Republican voted for it.
And Mr. Norquist, you probably have heard that before.
What's your response?
Of course, you're talking about a Congress Senate woman who votes for every spending increase.
She doesn't understand the deficit comes from spending too much money, not from taking too much from the American people.
And again, that is the perfect, your point that they want to claim that other people other than non-existent people pay taxes.
And cutting tax is a problem, but raising spending isn't.
The two parties are very divided.
And we're going into an election.
We're having a discussion about that.
The Democratic Party, and Senator's perfect example, is a collection of structures that benefit from big government.
Government employees, government contractors, big city political machines, the trial lawyers.
And then you go through all the people who get government grants to run their lives.
Various government unions.
It's a takings coalition who view the proper role of government is taking things from some people and giving it to usually them, but to others.
That's the point of government.
On the other side is a leave-us-alone coalition, the Republicans, the conservatives.
And around that table is people who, on their vote-moving issue, want to be left alone.
Freedom of religion, which is why evangelical Protestants, conservative Catholics, Orthodox Jews, Muslims, all vote just don't agree how to get to heaven, but they do want the freedom to raise their own lives and their own children.
You go around to people who care about the Second Amendment, people who want to educate their own children, homeschoolers, private school, school choice, businessmen and women who want to, independent contractors who want to run their own lives, be their own boss, not have a boss, not have a union, take any of their money when they're working.
All around the table, everybody there wants to be left alone, and none of them are asking for money from the government.
So there's a difference between the two parties.
There is a chart.
Before we show the guy, if you can take a couple of calls.
Yeah, let's hear from the Collette in Oregon.
Democrats line, you're on with Grover Norquist.
Go ahead, please.
Yeah, I'm curious.
We've had all these unfunded wars that have gone on to the debt, mostly by.