Yet another passenger of the Norquist GOP Titanic is jumping ship before it — and perhaps the country — goes down:
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday said he is ready to violate conservative activist Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge to reach a deal to avoid the looming “fiscal cliff.”
“I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country,” Graham said on ABC’s “This Week.” “When you’re $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece.”
The subtext: Norquist’s pledge is a turkey to those who want to prevent a nosedive off the fiscal cliff.
But Graham cautioned that he he would violate the pledge “only if Democrats will do entitlement reforms” and ruled our increasing tax rates.
“I am willing to generate revenue,” he said. “I will not raise tax rates to do it; I will cap deductions.”The pledge from Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which has been signed by the majority of Republican lawmakers, commits signers to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses … and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”
It’s a new era.
(Presumably)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.