Norquist Offers GOP Plan to Fight Obama Fiscal Cliff Agenda

Grover Norquist said Thursday that the GOP is not only far from powerless, but actually can thwart President Barack Obama’s fiscal cliff agenda effectively if they use the tools available, reports Politico.

The Americans for Tax Reform founder said Republicans in Congress have three strong weapons to deploy in the battle to prevent Obama from massively increasing government spending: the sequester of military funds in the fiscal cliff, the debt ceiling debate in early 2013, and the Senate’s inability to pass a budget.




Urgent: Will Raising Taxes Help or Hurt America?

“Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years,” he said. “He’s not going to have any fun at all, he may just have to go blow up small countries he can’t pronounce because it won’t be any fun to be here, because he won’t be able to spend the kind of cash he was hoping to.”

Republicans in Congress have called it irresponsible to go over the fiscal cliff for any reason, but Norquist said one of the most powerful tools the party has available is because of it: sequestration.

The fiscal cliff includes about $110 billion per year in spending cuts over the next decade, something that Norquist said Democrats don’t want because it actually cuts spending, rather than paying lip service to the idea.

Since 2009, the last time Congress passed a new budget, the Senate has offered an annual continuing resolution because members could not agree on a new spending plan. Norquist said this could be taken advantage of to force spending cuts or at least limit growth of government.

“Because the Senate doesn’t do its job, because Harry Reid plays politics instead of governing, they haven’t got a budget,” he said. “‘They do a continuing resolution … they still have to vote to allow that money to be spent, which means the House of Representatives has to agree to continue the budget. What they did in 2011, for about a month or two, they said, ‘We’ll extend the continuing resolution for a few weeks if you save four billion dollars.’”

Sometime early next year, the government will once again reach the debt ceiling, this, Norquist said, is the most powerful of the three tools available to the GOP.

Urgent: Will Raising Taxes Help or Hurt America?

“It will have to come up every month or so as Obama keeps hitting that ceiling,” Norquist said of the nation’s borrowing limit. “Republicans can raise it a little or a lot, or for a month or for six months. That gives them discipline as it did in 2011 to require spending restraint.”