Ready to Break "The Pledge"

Perhaps the influence of Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, and their Taxpayer Protection Pledge is waning. Republicans, the party of low taxes, stand ready to raise the income tax rate of the approximately half of American taxpaying units that pay none. Why is that? Well, low income households are not likely to contribute to any political cause. When your major contributors are the very rich, politicians are going to follow the money in every sense of the phrase. There is also a narrative about the greater worthiness of the people who pay taxes and produce jobs for other Americans. Bruce Bartlett has gathered a few quotes.

  Last year, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, declared that taxes on the rich should not be raised until the poor are taxed. “I think many taxpayers are skeptical that the answer to our fiscal problems is for them to sacrifice more, when almost half of all households are not paying any income taxes,” Mr. Hatch said.
  In April, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said it was “unfair” that 45 percent of people don’t pay any federal income taxes. Asked if he wanted to increase taxes on these people, he replied, “You’ve got to discuss that issue.”
  In May, Richard Mourdock, the Republican Senate nominee in Indiana, likened the current split between taxpayers and nontaxpayers to the pre-Civil War division of the nation between slave and free. Consciously using Abraham Lincoln’s famous “house divided” terminology from 1858, Mr. Mourdock said, “When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security, but they are not paying income taxes — and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.”

The poor's free ride is over! To quote our own Governor Perry, "We're dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don'e even pay any income tax."

Mr. Bartlett's article is worth reading in its entirety, and I also recommend James Kwak's piece in The Atlantic, The GOP's Bizarre, Disturbing Passion for Raising Taxes on the Poor