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Misguided Pledges

JOSEPH CANNISI
Posted 4/25/16

The Republican Party and conservative groups have long understood the power of the “pledge.” In 1986, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) began signing legislators to the Taxpayers Protection Pledge. By 2011, 236 of 242 House Republicans, along with 40 of 47 GOP Senators, (96 percent of those elected to represent us) had signed the pledge, and our National Debt has risen nearly tenfold in response, from $2 trillion in 1986 to over $19 trillion today.

For those who dared to violate the ATR pledge, the consequences were swift. When fiscal realities in the 1990 budget required that President George H.W. Bush go back on his 1988 campaign, “read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, he found himself shunned within his own party and a one-term President two years later.

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