Norquist, as a tool of the obscenely rich, has done more to destroy government than anyone! The rich don't want a big government that can tax them, regulate them, tell them what to do or help average amercians To quote Norquist: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

The Right-Wing Zealot Who Wrecked the Budget Process and Made Washington Dysfunctional https://newrepublic.com/article/171101/grover-norquist-pledge-broke-washington

#GOPIsTheToolOfTheRich
#TheRichHateGovernment

"In sum, in the last half-century, Democratic presidents have actually reduced the deficit, because of the numbers under Clinton, while Republican presidents have increased it by something greater than $3.5 trillion.

It’s not even close as to which party is more fiscally sound. It’s the party that’s willing to raise taxes—to do things like protect the Medicare Trust Fund, as Biden wants to do. The party that won’t consider the tax increases Biden proposes—on a sliver of the population (the 1 percent) that got $6.5 trillion richer last year, by the way, in one short year, leaving it owning a record 32.3 percent of the country’s wealth—is the party that shuts down any hope of compromise, all because of this destructive pledge, on the very day the president proposes his budget."

"Grover Norquist’s 45-year-long reign of terror started with a simple pledge.

President Biden unveiled his budget last week, and everyone immediately pronounced it dead on arrival. This is because the proposal has—gasp!—tax increases. The Republican Party won’t tolerate them, so the budget is dead.

Yes, Biden proposes to increase several taxes. They’re all on plutocrats and corporations: a billionaires’ minimum tax, a stock buyback tax, a higher capital gains rate for the wealthiest investors, an increase in the tax that sustains Medicare on dollars earned above $400,000, a hike in the top marginal rate for individuals and couples, and so on.
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Congress has failed to pass a budget on time almost every year for the last 45 years...Democrats and Republicans can’t negotiate a budget anymore because only one side is willing to negotiate. That is to say—Democrats are willing to discuss the budget cuts Republicans want. But Republicans are not willing to discuss the tax increases Democrats want.
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Norquist’s pledge has done more to destroy policymaking and derail the normal horse-trading of the legislative process than any other single development of the era.
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But since 1990, with a few minor and often temporary exceptions, Republicans in Congress have not voted for a single tax increase. That’s 33 years of obstinacy. Vast new forms of wealth have been created in those years, massive fortunes built, trillions of dollars—$50 trillion to be precise, according to a 2020 Rand study—of wealth transferred from the middle class to the very rich, and not a single Republican has voted to increase a tax.

This is not just income taxes...It’s any tax. The last time the federal government raised the gas tax was in 1993, 30 years ago. It’s been 18 cents a gallon ever since...There’s a reason our roads and bridges are crumbling, and the reason is that Republicans won’t pay for upkeep.

Wanna know what the gas (petrol) tax is in the EU? At least $1.55 per gallon. Yes, that’s a lot of money. Wanna know which continent, generally speaking, has the best roads? Europe. Coincidence? No. America’s roads, in this survey, rank thirty-sixth.
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So you know how many states have raised the gas tax in those 30 years? The answer is 47!
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In Congress, 42 senators and 189 House members have signed the pledge. All are Republicans, which means that 86 percent of GOP senators and 85 percent of the party’s House members have signed on to participate in a permanent stranglehold on policymaking.
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It’s only in the fantasyland of Washington that Republicans can be so insanely irresponsible.

...it is the Republicans who are fiscally irresponsible. Consider these deficit numbers. Jimmy Carter left office with a deficit of $74 billion, which made conservatives apoplectic. Reagan doubled it. Bush Sr. nearly doubled it again. Clinton wiped it all away and left the country with a $236 billion surplus. Bush Jr. wiped out the surplus and tacked on $460 billion in deficits (that is, adding those two figures, he finished nearly $700 billion in the red). Obama increased the deficit by about $125 billion...Trump increased the deficit by … wanna guess? Try $2.6 trillion."