Americans for Tax Reform
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Americans for Tax Reform is an interest group seeking to reduce the overall level of taxation in the United States, at the federal, state and local level. Its founder and president is Grover Norquist, an influential Republican lobbyist.
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[edit] Background
Americans for Tax Reform was founded in 1985 by future Attorney General Bill Barr to organize grass-roots support for President Ronald Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act. Grover Norquist was offered the title of director.
[edit] Projects
Since 1986, ATR has sponsored the "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", a written promise by legislators and candidates for office that commits them to oppose tax increase. (There are two versions: national and state. According to an August 15, 2006, news release by the group (pdf), President George W. Bush, 47 U.S. senators, and 223 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed the pledge, as well as six governors and over 1,300 state legislators.
ATR also sponsors the calculation of "Cost of Government Day", the day on which, by its calculations, "Americans stop working to pay the costs of taxation, deficit spending, and regulations by federal and state governments." [1]
[edit] Global warming
ATR is a member organization of the Cooler Heads Coalition, which promotes skepticism about the effects of global warming.[2].
[edit] Money from Abramoff clients
[edit] Connections to Jack Abramoff
According to an investigative report on convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's lobbying, released in June 2006 by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, ATR served as a "conduit" for funds that flowed from Abramoff's clients to surreptitiously finance grass-roots lobbying campaigns. [3]
In 1996, the Choctaw tribe, an Abramoff client, donated $60,000 to ATR to oppose a tax on Indian casinos. The funds continued; in 1999, Norquist moved $1.15 million in Abramoff client money to Ralph Reed's for-profit political consulting company, Century Strategies, and to anti-gambling groups working to defeat a state lottery in Alabama. The money routing was deliberate: in one email reminder to himself, Abramoff wrote: "Call Ralph re Grover doing pass through."
ATR kept a percentage of the funds that passed though the organization. In May 1999, Norquist asked Abramoff "What is the status of the Choctaw stuff?", in an email. "I have a 75g [$75,000] hole in my budget from last year. ouch." Abramoff eventually grew annoyed at the amount that ATR retained, e-mails show: "Grover kept another $25 k!" Abramoff wrote in a February 2000 note to himself. [4]
On May 9, 2001, Chief Raul Garza of the Kickapoo tribe of Texas met with President Bush, with Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist in attendance. Days before the meeting, the tribe paid $25,000 to Americans for Tax Reform at Abramoff's direction. According to the organization's communications director, John Kartch, the meeting was one of several gatherings with President Bush sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform. On the same day, the chief of the Louisiana Coushattas also attended an Americans for Tax Reform-sponsored gathering with President Bush. The Coushattas also gave $25,000 to Americans for Tax Reform soon before the event.
The details of the Kickapoo meeting and a letter dated May 10, 2001 from Americans for Tax Reform thanking the Kickapoos for their contribution were revealed to the New York Times in 2006 by former council elder Isidro Garza, who with Raul Garza (no relation), is under indictment in Texas for embezzling tribal money. According to Isidro Garza, Abramoff did not say the donation was required to meet the president; the White House denied any knowledge of the transaction.[1]
[edit] Quotes by Grover Norquist
- On Pat Robertson's 700 Club, Grover Norquist said the following about the Bush Administration, “We is them, and they is us. When I walk through the White House, I recognize as many people as when I would walk through the Heritage Foundation.”
- “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.”
- “I want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP [gross national product] 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.”
- “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.”
- “In the old days, George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse doorway and told children they could not come in. Today, the foes of school choice stand in the doorway and say to the grandchildren of George Wallace's victims, “You cannot get out.”
