Washington, D.C. “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” These are the words of 51-year old Grover Norquist, one of Washington’s most outspoken neo-conservatives today.
A Harvard graduate, he is president of Americans for Tax Reform, a lobby he founded in 1985, allegedly at President Reagan's request. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union and the National Rifle Association, writes monthly columns for The American Spectator, and chairs the "Wednesday Meeting," a gathering of as many as 100 like-minded stalwarts.
In Norquist’s own words, “The ‘Leave us Alone’ coalition includes taxpayers who want the government to reduce the tax burden, property owners, farmers, and homeowners who want their property rights respected, gun owners who want the government to leave them and their guns alone, homeschoolers who wish to educate their own children as they see fit, traditional values conservatives who don't want the government throwing condoms at their children and making fun of their religious values. The Leave us Alone coalition also includes those Americans who serve in the military and police as they are the legitimate functions of government that protect Americans' right to be left alone by foreign aggressors or domestic criminals.” Norquist would like to see the "Leave Us Alone" enthusiasts to be the core of the Republican Party.
On March 11, HarperCollins published Norquist's much ballyhooed book “Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives.” He focuses on the enemies of the Leave Us Alone movement in what he calls the "Takings Coalition," represented historically by the constituencies of the New Deal, such as labor unions, government employees, trial lawyers, government contractors, and welfare recipients, including all those who want to reallocate money and power as they please, and depend on government spending, mandates, or preferences for their livelihood, rather than on free markets or voluntary service.” As government shrinks, Norquist believes, the Takings Coalition will implode.
Norquist also invented the Taxpayer Protection Pledge for lawmakers, a promise never to vote for an increase of marginal tax rates and never to eliminate tax loopholes without simultaneously supporting equivalent reductions in marginal tax rates. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Norquist as “the person who [sic] I regard as the most innovative, creative, courageous and entrepreneurial leader of the anti-tax efforts and of conservative grassroots activism in America. ... He has truly made a difference and truly changed American history.”
The Leave Us Alone coalition obviously panders to the fantasy that we can have both low taxes and all the government services we want for the highest standard of living in the world. Norquist conveniently ignores the fact that regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Federal Aviation Administration, are serving all citizens, not only the recipients of public welfare. He ignores the fact that within eight years after Reagan’s tax cuts the national debt doubled. George W. Bush first cut taxes and then got Americans into an unprovoked and unprepared war on the other side of the world that might still cost the nation a trillion dollars mostly borrowed from foreign governments, including China.
While being attacked by liberal Democrats as major debunker of social welfare, libertarian Norquist also got into hot water with the Christian right when he addressed a fundraiser for the gay and lesbian Log Cabin Republicans. One pro-family leader called Norquist's appearance "an act of utter betrayal."
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Thomas Friedman commented in the New York Times on Norquist’s opposition to government aid for the needy: "I hope that he was busy drowning government in his bathtub when the levee broke and that he had to wait for a U.S. Army helicopter to get out of town."