Repealing all the taxes on Obamacare could mark the the major reform of an "entitlement," Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said Tuesday morning.
"Obama is 20 taxes with a stethoscope attached to it," Norquist told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "It's $1 trillion in taxes and more than $1 trillion in spending that was going to continue to blow out the debt."
And once Obamacare is repealed, as is expected with Republican majorities in both congressional chambers and the White House, there will not be the "continuing increase of the debt decades in and decades out," said Norquist.
"That is a reform of an entitlement," he told the program. "It's repealing the entitlement that Obama put in with two misstatements, one that you'd still be able to keep your doctor and your insurance, which wasn't true, and the other was that he wouldn't pay for it with taxes on middle-income people. The taxes to pay for Obamacare dramatically hit middle-income people, flexible savings accounts and so on."
But when Norquist was asked if President-elect Donald Trump should order cuts for programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, Norquist said he should look at the Pentagon "for starters."
Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Calif., has introduced legislation that would reduce the number of civilian employees at the Pentagon, Norquist pointed out, and cuts to programs like Social Security would be much more difficult to approve.
"Social Security requires 60 votes to change it, and I don't see any Democrat willing, since 1983, to make any reforms to protect Social Security," said Norquist. "I think you will see efforts — I think it would be a good idea to block grant Medicaid, food stamps, housing and jobs programs, the four major means-tested welfare programs in the United States."
Currently, there are 183 means-tested welfare programs run by the federal government, said Norquist, and "if you block those grants out to the states, we would do what Bill Clinton did with aid to the families with dependent children."