Grover Norquist: Bush Tax Cut Expiration Will Cost Taxpayers $1 Trillion

Low-tax crusader and Republican strategist Grover Norquist tells Newsmax that letting the Bush tax cuts expire in January 2011 would amount to a $1 trillion tax increase — the largest boost in American history.

Norquist — president of Americans for Tax Reform — also warns that President Barack Obama and the Democrats are intent on pursuing the “very bad idea” of imposing a European-style value-added tax.

And he says the tea party movement arose when millions of Americans became “scared straight” by huge increases in federal spending and debt.

Americans for Tax Reform is a coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals, and businesses opposed to higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels.

Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of this year, as the Democrats plan, will in fact result in “about a trillion-dollar tax increase on the American people over the next decade,” Norquist says.

“It would be the largest tax increase in American history, and it would take every marginal tax rate and increase it. The taxes on businesses, on capital gains, would be very high.

Asked about proposals for a national sales tax known as a value-added tax, or VAT, Norquist tells Newsmax:

“A VAT is a very bad idea. It is true that it is what the Democrats plan to do. It is Obama’s goal.

“Obama and the Democrats have been moving the United States toward the European social welfare model. That has a VAT, on average in Europe, of 20 percent.

“If we were to adopt a value-added tax as Europe has, your salary would be worth 20 percent less because you could buy less with it. Your life savings would be worth 20 percent less. Your pension would be worth 20 percent less, because anything you bought would have a 20 percent value-added tax attached to it.

“It would be very bad for the American economy.”

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