Did you know that almost every conservative politician in the country has signed a pledge to encourage big multinational corporations to keep sending jobs out of the country?
Grover Norquist, head of the lobbying organization Americans for Tax Reform, is one of the leaders of the modern "conservative movement." Norquist is well-known (among certain circles) for his statement that he wants to shrink government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."
As part of the conservative movement's long-term strategy to weaken and destabilize government, his organization gets conservative politicians to sign a Taxpayer Protection Pledge: "In the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, candidates and incumbents solemnly bind themselves to oppose any and all tax increases." Almost every conservative politician in the country has signed this pledge.
Of course, the point of this is to destroy government's ability to govern. And, of course, with government, i.e. "We, the People," out of the way, something else necessarily fills the vacuum. And that something else is the large monopolistic corporations and extremely wealthy few that fund organizations like Americans for Tax Reform and the rest of the "conservative movement." (Quelle surprise.) This is why conservatives propose tax cuts as the solution to everything -- it is really about defunding government by causing the government to run out of money. This is why you will never, ever hear a conservative talk about any actual "spending cuts" they propose, with specifics, and how their proposed cuts will add up to actually cutting the deficit. It isn't about cutting the deficit, it is about getting rid of government's ability to regulate what these corporations do.
A Pledge To Encourage Companies To Kill Jobs
With that in mind, I have been hearing a very interesting line of attack on The Pledge in this election. If there is one thing the public is really, really angry about it is companies that close factories and ship jobs out of the country. In fact, there is a tax break that encourages companies to do this. Democrats in Congress have been trying to close that tax break. Every single Republican has been voting against closing this loophole and for one and only one reason -- closing this tax loophole for the big monopolistic corporations that ship our jobs out of the country would violate the Norquist Pledge.
Government Is We, the People, Making the Decisions
Let's hope that this line of attack enables people to understand that "government spending" is money that is spent on We, the People, and that "less government" means less decision making by We, the People and more decision-making by... guess who.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.