Don't Think Grover Norquist is Dishonest?

Here is Some Evidence

Several people have complained that The Dismal Political Economist has erred in calling Grover Norquist dishonest. So maybe a clarification is appropriate.

The point that was made about Mr. Norquist in the report under attack,

Grover Norquist is Dishonest

was that Mr. Norquist was not against taxes per se, but was using that rather popular position (after all who is in favor of taxes?) as a stalking horse to hide his real agenda, which would be very unpopular.  The real agenda, and Mr. Norquist is open about this, is that he wants to eliminate every social program that the Federal government is involved with.  However, were Mr. Norquist to recruit members of Congress to sign a pledge that they would eliminate Federal Agriculture programs, Education programs, Health programs, etc he would fail.  But in signing his no tax increase pledge that is exactly what they are doing.

To illustrate here is Mr. Norquist in an Interview with the Harvard Crimson.

Now here is Mr. Norquist on taxes

We should have zero capital gains tax. We should abolish the death tax. We have a corporate tax rate of 35 percent, when the average in Europe is 25 percent. We ought to at least take our corporate tax rate to 25 percent. Our personal tax rate, now at 35 percent, should go to 25 percent. Serfs in medieval Europe were taxed 20 to 25 percent. I don’t think we should be taxed higher than serfs.

Notice how specific he is, he not only identifies which taxes he would cut, but by how much (of course he does not identify the loss in revenue and how it would be made up).

Now here is Mr. Norquist on Government Spending.

I want to drop the government in half over the next 25 years, and then drop it in half again. The government’s about 33 percent of GDP, 33 percent of the economy. We want to take it down to 16 and a half percent, then take it down to eight percent, all of which would take us to where we were at the turn of the century.

Notice the complete lack of specificity.  Not a single program is mentioned.  Why, because Mr. Norquist and those who would cut the Federal budget always seem to  conveniently leave out what they would cut.

The point:  No one should be taken seriously on cutting Federal Spending until they are willing to identify which programs they would cut, and to set forth the consequences of those cuts.  That would be real honesty.