Why Grover Norquist Is Wrong about Taxes | Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren | Cato Institute: Commentary

Why Grover Norquist Is Wrong about Taxes | Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'To complain about federal handouts — as ATR tends to do — while supporting tax breaks for the ethanol production — a position initially taken by ATR this spring — is to make a fetish of form over function.'

' First, holding the line on taxes constrains only one of the four tools (taxes, tax deductions, spending without taxation, and regulation) used by government to alter economic outcomes. As long as you expand government in some other way, you live up to your pledge to Grover. Second, the charge that eliminating a tax break is the same as raising a tax (and thus, verboten) turns the alteration of economic outcomes via the tax code into an actual conservative virtue. Third, it encourages less transparent exercises of government power and, thus, makes it harder to police government action. Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, it allows politicians to falsely advertise themselves as partisans of limited government even when they are busily expanding government.'