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Grover Norquist [1956-0] American

Rank: 101
Politician, American lawmaker

Grover Glenn Norquist is an American political advocate who is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that opposes all tax increases, and a co-founder of the Islamic Free Market Institute.

Government, Faith, Alone, Education, Happiness, Leadership, Politics, Society

Quote	Tags	Rank
The goal is to reduce the size and scope of government spending, not to focus on the deficit. The deficit is the symptom of the disease.	Government	101
The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.	Government, Society	102
Government should enforce rule of law. It should enforce contracts, it should protect people bodily from being attacked by criminals. And when the government does those things, it is facilitating liberty. When it goes beyond those things, it becomes destructive to both human happiness and human liberty.	Government, Happiness	103
The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for 'charity' to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity.		104
My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.	Government	105
Obama has been perhaps the most partisan President since Truman. He hasn't learned to be civil - note his insulting speech to Paul Ryan, who did us the courtesy of scoring a budget. The president has to talk to Republicans when it comes to the debt ceiling. He has reached the debt ceiling before anyone expected.		106
What's hurting the U.S. economy is total government spending. The deficit is an indicator that the government is spending so much money that it can't even get around to stealing all of the money that it wants to spend. But the tip of the iceberg is not what hit the Titanic - it was the 90 percent of the iceberg under water.	Government	107
Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.		108
We have to have a conversation about whether Obama's plan to increase spending to occupy Afghanistan helps make America a safer country, or not. I think at some point, we may decide that we don't have to have that size military and cost footprint in the country. You look at what you want to accomplish, how many soldiers you need.		109
Look, the center right coalition in American politics today is best understood as a coalition of groups and individuals that on the issue that brings them to politics what they want from the government is to be left alone.	Alone, Government, Politics	110
Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.	Education, Government	111
If the parties would brand themselves the way Coke and Pepsi and other products do so that you knew what you were buying, it had quality control. I vote for the Republican. He or she will not raise my taxes. I'll buy one. I'll take that one home.		112
Democrats are people who raise your taxes and spend your money on weird stuff. They steal your guns, and they spit on your faith. And because the Democratic Party was taken over by the aggressive secular guys, they became hostile not just to conservative Catholics and evangelical Christians, but Orthodox Jews and Muslims and Mormons.	Faith	113
Compromise is moving in the right directlon more slowly than one might like.		114
Historically, opposition to immigration in the United States has been racially and religiously motivated in the ugliest, nastiest way possible.		115
Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.		116
I run a taxpayer group - the most powerful guy in D.C., nonsense. OK? There are buildings with thousands of people in them, all lobbying for more spending and higher levels of spending and more government commitments. And there are a handful - a handful of groups that fight for less spending.		117
The job of the government isn't to go around and try and make people sacrifice, it's to try and make people free. The reason why we have a national defense is to protect our freedoms.		118
Democrats are people who raise your taxes and spend your money on weird stuff. They steal your guns, and they spit on your faith.	Faith	119
The important thing about tax reform is you make the tax code less complicated, easier for people to understand.		120
This always confuses liberals, that conservatives like the military and don't like the bureaucracy. That's because the military has their guns pointed out and the bureaucracy has them pointed in.		121
Spending is not caring. Spending is what politicians do instead of caring. Spending more does not guarantee success. Politicians like to measure spending because it is easier than measuring actual metrics of accomplishment.		122
Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats.		123
Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.		124
Clinton and Obama practice this politics known quaintly as the Richard Speck strategy: if you cannot take on everyone in the room at once, take them out of the room one at a time.		125
Well, certainly the Democrats have been arguing to raise the capital gains tax on all Americans. Obama says he wants to do that. That would slow down economic growth. It's not necessarily helpful to the economy. Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged.		126
The tax issue is the most powerful issue in American politics going back to the Tea Party.		201
A lot of young people just starting out unskilled, as all Americans do when they're born here, come to this country, and so the business community is for immigration. Big businesses, small businesses, high-tech, low-tech, the communities of faith, and the Republican leadership.	Leadership	202
It is wrong to divide the nation white against black, native born against immigrant or one religion against another. It is also wrong to divide people by income. East Germany was not an improvement over South Africa. Obama divides Americans against each other. This is wrong.		203
Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.		204
The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.		205
Everyone would have bigger and safer cars if they didn't have those CAFE standards: corporate average fuel economy.		206
Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.		207
We want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.		208
Obsessions turn people off.		209
Being married is kind of like being a Ken-doll; you don't get to dress yourself anymore.		210
The statists want to control the economy.		211
My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit.		212
We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the House through redistricting through 2012. And rather than negotiate with the teachers' unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.		213
I read murder mysteries. I exercise 40 minutes a day. I watch videotapes while I exercise. I listen to audiotapes when I am in my car. And I try to stay in three different centuries.		214
There are several reasons to oppose tax increases. First, every dollar of tax increase is a dollar you didn't get in spending restraint. Two, if you walk into the Democrats' Andrews-Air-Force-Base, Lucy-with-the-Football trick for the third time in a row - they don't have have a saying for being fooled three times!		215
I think it's very important to always make sure that you're talking to the entire coalition and to as many Americans as possible; not to go chasing after one little group or another. The Democrats would bring new groups into their party and not notice that larger groups are going out the back door.		216
When I was younger, I thought of myself as a Nixon Republican because he was the anti-Communist.		217
We cannot allow anything that's called 'national defense' to justify any and all spending. We need to be very, very careful that we don't overspend and say, 'Oh, that's defense,' when perhaps it isn't.		218
We need a Federal government that does what the government needs to do and stops doing what the government ought not to be doing.		219
Immigration is America's No. 1 economic asset. The rest of the world can't do that. We can have every smart person we want, every high-skilled person we want.		220
The future of the Republican Party, all the different folks looking to lead the Republican Party at the national level in the future, recognize we should do immigration reform.		221
People who say that there's a vote within the Republican Party that moves against immigrants is just factually not accurate.		222
If you feel the government should leave you alone, you're a Republican. If you think the job of the government is to go push people around and take things for you, then you're a Democrat.		223
Spending should be transparent. All spending by the Pentagon should be online. Every check. Exceptions should be made for legitimate national security issues. But military and civilian pay and retirement benefits are not state secrets. This has already been done in many state governments.		224
Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase.		225
Income should be taxed one time at one rate, not again and again.		226
As more and more Americans own shares of stock, more and more Americans understand that taxing businesses is taxing them. Regulating businesses is taxing them. They ought to be thinking long-term about their ownership, not just their income, and that they should pay taxes on capital, as well as taxes on labor.		301
I'm for tax reform, not tax increases.		302
The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised.		303
Our job is to make people free.		304
Stupider than France is not where we want to be on tax policy.		305
If you raise taxes, it won't reduce the deficit. The other team will simply spend the resources.		306
My goal in life is to get the federal government down to half its present size and under control, and then I can write murder mysteries.		307
Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.		308
Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller, we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves.		309
There are 100 different doors to come into the conservative movement. You can disagree with 99 of them, as long as you agree on one: more-limited government.		310
Obama wants to take the individual small business tax to 44 percent, and the corporate rate - he says - down to 28 percent or whatever. But that really damages the small businesses. And it doesn't make us competitive. You got to take them both down to 20, because state and local corporate taxes are 5 percent.		311
I know the activists I deal with, we sort of try and check each other to make sure that we haven't gone native, that you come to Washington thinking it's a cesspool, you don't want to end up thinking it's really a hot tub and getting used to it. So that's something one has to keep an eye on all the time.		312
The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government.		313
We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy.		314
Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.		315
Wars are expensive and dangerous. They're not political winners.		316
The tax issue is the most powerful issue in American politics going back to the Tea Party. People say, 'Oh, Grover Norquist has power.' No. Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform focus on the tax issue. The tax issue is a powerful issue.		317
We should reduce total government spending as a percentage of the economy. The left wants to focus on the deficit so they can take us away from the focus on spending as a percentage of the economy.		318
As long as we're focused on spending, there are only two ways to do that: One is spend less, and Democrats have no solutions for that. Or we have pro-growth policies that make the economy grow so the dead-weight cost of government becomes a smaller percentage of the economy and therefore less expensive.		319
Twenty-five years ago, I created the Taxpayer Protection Pledge at the federal level. Then I brought it to the state and local level. About 97 percent of the Republicans in the House and 85 percent in the Senate have signed on, and the number of candidates who have taken the pledge is even higher. It's become a party position.		320
The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised. Obama and the Democrats have a fight with the American people, not with me.		321
If the Republican Party works with the Hispanic community, the immigrant community, they're natural allies. People who came to this country are more freedom-loving and more American than people who just happened to be born here.		322
Obama is a guy who claims to be unaware that there was a Tea Party, a guy that's detached from the country.		323
A 20-pound weight on the back of a small horse is more damaging than a 20-pound weight on a very big horse.		324
There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low.		325
If you're so committed to liberty that you see the Soviet Union as a threat, you're a Republican. If you're kind of indifferent to freedom and the level of the lack of freedom in the Soviet Union is just a question of extent and not really threatening to anybody, then you're a Democrat.		326
Reforming Social Security to make it fully funded and independently held, that's compassionate because it allows people to control their own lives; cutting taxes on families and all Americans to let people have more control over their lives.		401
We laugh at liberals who declare that their favorite spending programs should be exempt because the spending is for a noble cause.		402
People learn their politics at a young age and tend to stick with it.		403
Most Republicans have made it very clear they're not interested in raising taxes. They want to reform government.		404
If you have to change the law to get more money, that's a tax increase, and Americans for Tax Reform supports all efforts of tax reform, getting rid of deductions or credits, or something that's misclassified, as long as you at the same time reduce rates so that it's not a hidden tax.		405
I was an anti-communist before I was political in other ways.		406
The Republican Party and the conservative free market movement have been presidentially focused for too long.		407
The taxpayer group in every state is always - always referred to as nuts.		408
People who are willing to stick to a strong pro-life position aren't going to be pushed off a strong anti-tax position. For people who like to think in ideologically cohesive ways, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.		409
Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.		410
I was a math guy as a kid. I was really good at math. I wasn't particularly interested in it.		411
Less government, less regulation, lower taxes.		412
I'm not for no taxes. That would be an anarchist. I am for lower taxes.		413
If you let people own their land, they take care of it. That's why privately owned land is always taken care of, and the parks look like cesspools. Nobody takes care of what everybody owns.		414
It would be unwise for the modern Republican Party to come across as hostile to immigration. That has been the losing position in American history for 200 years.		415
The central issue of our time - of all times - is the size, power and scope of government.		416
Tax reductions are usually simpler and less distortive. I'm certainly willing to look at getting rid of tax deductions/credits, and go to dramatically reduced rates.		417
My wife and I have what's known as mixed marriage. I am a Methodist, she is a Muslim. So we're keeping it in the M's.		418

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