Grover Norquist Talks Tax Bill in the House
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While the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" got its name from President Trump, many of its core ideas come from Republican ideas that predate Trump's terms in office. One conservative leader getting credit for the tax and spending cuts is Grover Norquist. A recent Salon column went as far as calling him the father of the "Big Beautiful Bill."

Now that the bill has made its way from the Senate back to the House, we want to get his take in an exclusive interview. Grover Norquist is president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform, and he joins us now from our bureau in Washington. Grover, thanks for joining us today. Would you agree with that characterization, you as father of the big, beautiful bill?

Well, I run Americans for Tax Reform, which works on reducing taxes across the board. And we've obviously worked with President Trump and President Reagan before him. What President Trump has put forward in the bill back in 2017 and now really builds on the successes that Reagan had taking marginal tax rates down.

What Trump did was he took the highest corporate rate in the world, the United States, at 35 percent and brought it down to 21 percent and has made it clear he plans to go to 15. That has made America much more competitive. You talk to the companies. They're raising more money through the corporate rate.

at 21 percent, then they would have at 35 percent because of growth. And that's the model Reagan had on individual income taxes. But moving to expensing as dramatically as Trump did, as the Republicans did in 2017, making that permanent. The big change right now is that the good ideas in the 2017 bill will now be made permanent.

permanent. They're not going to be negotiated every five or 10 years. There won't be spending requirements attached to them. This will help set the country on a path to serious growth because companies and investors know what the rules are, and the rules are good. So it sets us up for growth, but at the same time, the legislation with its $4.5 trillion of tax cuts also features $1.2 trillion in spending cuts. That leaves us with a pretty big gap.

Is that getting the job done as John Thune had said?

Well, it certainly is. We're moving both tax reduction as far as we can with the votes and spending reduction as far as we can with the votes. You can't do everything if you don't have the votes, and so you move as you can. But most importantly, the pro-growth parts of this tax bill are estimated by Kevin Hassett, the economist at the White House, to take us to 3 percent growth, and that

increased annual growth over a decade would get you four trillion dollars more. Those these are standard building on the CBO numbers over a year. It used to be two and a half.

billion for every 1% growth. You go to 1.5% plus inflation, you're looking at $4 trillion in additional revenue from growth, not higher tax rates, but economic growth. And we have to grow our way away from the debt and deficit as we did after World War II. At World War II, we had 100% of GDP.

You are known for your objections to tax raises. Of course, your pro-tax cuts. You are also known for wanting to shrink the government down. But if you buy the argument that waste, fraud, and abuse are the only categories of spending being eliminated for Medicaid, this bill actually expands...

the size, the role of government in some ways, right? Because Washington is now determining winners and losers in chips and certain forms of renewable energy, even as it drops EV credits for companies like Tesla. It also tells states what they can and cannot do with their own money in areas like healthcare. How do you square that?

Well, I would certainly support taking much of the legislation that deals with means-tested programs, welfare, and block-granting those to the states. We're moving in that direction. I think it'll take more time to do. But if you say to the states, "You got $10 billion last year for this project.

We're going to, you can have that, but it's not going to be growing faster than inflation. Over time, that really bends the cost curve down dramatically. And we would have 50 states competing, as Clinton did. He did this for welfare. He block-granted it to the states. 50 states took different approaches. The average state dropped its cost 30%. We should do that with more welfare programs.

So that's not a good idea. So there was a procedural motion during the Senate debate that really surprised a lot of people. It failed to pass, but it got everyone's attention. And that is 18 Republican senators voting for an amendment to raise the top tax rate on the super wealthy. What was your reaction? Were you shocked? Were you frustrated? Well, what happened is all the Democrats voted against it. So it was a meaningless vote. It wasn't going to go anywhere. But it still was held anyway. And they're on the record for voting for it.

Yes, I think it was unwise to do so because it will be portrayed as an endorsement of a higher tax. What it was actually about was they're saying we should have money for rural health care. And so what you saw was people with rural areas were told this is a pro-rural health care thing. It doesn't matter. It's just a gesture. And so they voted for it. The good news is that most people said this is not a serious idea. There were proposals for

about maybe we should raise the top rate. And this was put forward by some left-wing Democrats and a couple of big spending Republicans. Luckily, there aren't too many of them. And that got shot down by the president dramatically, as well as the House and Senate leadership. Remember, 85% of Republicans have signed the pledge never to raise taxes. That's not going to happen. Grover.

We know the president himself, though, has openly and repeatedly brought up the idea of raising taxes on the wealthy, saying that he would be okay with it in order to reduce the deficit. And I know that you are firmly opposed to his stance on that. I'm curious what kind of conversations you've had with him on that front specifically.

Well, we did talk about it, and the next day he made the announcement this was not happening. And there was a month-long effort to try and push this idea of -- the president campaigned on no tax rate increases on anyone, not upper income, middle income, lower income, business income. He said that at the State of the State address. He said it again and again.

His opponent, Kamala Harris, wanted to have the top rate stay higher. Kamala Harris lost the election. Trump won the election. And Trump made it clear that that was not going to happen. So you're saying you convinced Trump to change his mind?

No, no. Trump was never for that. Trump discusses many issues. And remember, the policy from House, Senate and White House was to say everything's on the table, everything's on the table. They said that for two months was all you were supposed to say is everything's on the table. So don't panic if anyone told you something was on the table. The people who said that would also call me on the phone and say, you know what, this is never happening. We're not allowed to.

have red lines until we get to the very end. So the good news is there was no support for taking the top rate up. The president made it clear that it's not happening. Nevertheless, the president saying that is very significant because, as you mentioned, although the other vote was simply a gesture, it is a meaningful gesture nonetheless. In the past, we know that you've been credited with rewriting the dogma of the Republican Party, tax cuts, smaller government, all of that. Since 2016, though, the president hasn't

has really changed the Republican Party and his base is different than the GOP of the past, right? It's more diverse, it's lower income, it's more pro-union, for instance. Do tax cuts make as much sense for this group of voters, North River?

Oh, absolutely. Look, the Republicans are beginning more and more of the middle class vote, of the blue collar vote. The base organized labor used to represent 35 percent of Americans. Now it's 10 percent, and half of those are government workers. So organized labor bosses have nothing to say about what middle class workers

union members or blue collar workers actually feel. They don't represent most blue collar workers. In construction, 10 percent of construction is unionized and the rest is not. So we are in a post-union world for most of the industries. And so talk to workers and to blue collar people about what they want.

They support lower taxes, not higher taxes. And you see this not just in Washington, but across the states. In those red states, Republican states, where Republicans are sweeping, getting two-thirds of both houses, carrying the middle class strongly, they are, one, phasing their income taxes to flat rates. Right, but they also don't want to see their services cut as well, their Medicare and Medicaid.

Well, there are two things. The changes on Medicaid are you have to be a citizen and you have to be working. That does not scare any person who is an able-bodied adult who is working or looking for work. That's not a challenge. I know the left has tried to misconstrue it, but

since it's not going to happen, they can talk about it. It's not going to scale, scare anybody in the House or the Senate. It's not true. What we can do is say, both on food stamps and on Medicare and Medicaid, that states should have more a decision to make sure how to focus where that

goes. And again, Bill Clinton did this. This is not a solely Republican idea. Bill Clinton did it with aid to families with dependent children and saved a lot of money and did so without all the things the left said was going to have people starve in the streets. The left said Bill Clinton looked them in the eye and said, you're lying. And the Republicans can do the same.

Okay, we got to leave it there. Grover Norquist is president and founder of Americans for Tax Reform joining us from Washington.

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