Radical Right - Fiscal Extremists

My guest, Stephen Moore, is the president of the Club for Growth, which was described in the Philadelphia Inquirer as the fund-raising pit bull of the conservative right. The Club is a political action committee which states its goal as electing candidates who support the Reagan vision of limited government and lower taxes. The Club is controversial within the Republican Party because it has worked against incumbent Republicans who don't fully support President Bush's tax cuts. The Club calls them RINOs, an acronym for 'Republicans in name only.' Stephen Moore is also a senior fellow in economics at the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute.

The Club for Growth funds and produces political ads. Let's listen to one called "Tax Blob." It's a parody of the 1958 science-fiction movie about a giant blob from outer space that is swallowing up a small town. In this ad, the giant tax blob is oozing through the streets of Washington, DC, engulfing the Capitol, the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial while mobs of people flee in horror.

(Soundbite of "Tax Blob" ad)

Unidentified Man #1: The blob has taken over Washington. It's the tax blob. The tax bite is at a record high. Washington's budget surplus has never been bigger. Now the blob is crushing the American economy. We're the Club for Growth, and we're out to stop the tax blob. President Bush is on our side. He wants lower tax rates for all Americans. Will your congressmen side with taxpayers or with the blob? The Club for Growth wants to know.

GROSS: Stephen Moore, welcome to FRESH AIR. So where has that ad, "The Tax Blob," run?

Mr. STEPHEN MOORE (President, Club for Growth; Senior Fellow, Cato Institute): That was an ad, Terry, that we ran about a year--a little over a year and a half ago, actually, and it was an ad to try to promote President Bush's tax plan. As you recall, in the beginning of 2003, President Bush had a pretty aggressive tax reduction proposal, and we ran that in some of the key states where we thought there were undecided senators and congressmen.

GROSS: Was it effective? Do you have any way of measuring that?

Mr. MOORE: Well, it wasn't the only ad we ran. We ran several others. We ran one that was very controversial where we likened some of the Republicans who were going to vote against President Bush's tax cut to what we called Franco-Republicans and said that, you know, President Bush needed strong allies abroad, and France wouldn't come to Bush's side in the debate. And similarly here at home, President Bush needs strong allies, and people like Olympia Snowe and George Voinovich aren't siding up with him.

I think those ads did have an effect. As you may recall, that tax bill passed by one vote in the Senate, and we think that by strong-arming some of these wavering congressmen and senators, we were able to get the crucial last vote that we needed, and of course, you know, that's how politics is. You know, these congressmen and senators had a lot of people whispering in their ears, and they had pressure being, you know, assigned to them on both sides of the aisles, and we think that we were able--the most important thing is we were able to win because that tax cut did pass, and we're real proud of that development because we think that the Bush tax cut of 2003 has had a very healthy impact on the US economy.

GROSS: Now how much personal input do you have on the ad, like the blob, "The Tax Blob" that we just heard, and are you a fan of the movie "The Blob"?

Mr. MOORE: Well, a funny little story about that is that the person who actually owns the copyright to that movie actually threatened to sue us for using footage from the movie, but it turned out, we didn't use footage from the movie. We just reproduced something that looked like the blob from that old 1950s sci-fi movie. I was a real fan of that ad. You know, one of the real fun things that we do at the Club for Growth is put together these ads. We love to use humor in our ads. We've always tried to make people laugh rather than make people angry. And so that's been kind of our forte, and I think that ad that you mentioned, "The Blob" ad, actually won a political science award for its creativity.

GROSS: What is the Club for Growth, and what are its goals?

Mr. MOORE: The goals of the Club for Growth are to try to help elect to Congress pro-economic growth, tax-cutting Reaganite Republicans. And when we started out in 1999, we were really emphasizing congressional House races. As we've evolved into an organization with 15,000 members, Terry, now we get involved in a lot of the Senate races as well. And I guess the best model for us was a group that was founded by a group on the left called EMILY's List. And EMILY's List was a group of pro-choice women that helped elect pro-choice people to Congress, and we thought that was a neat model to use, and we used that same model of having a broad-based membership. And we make recommendations to our members about who the best candidates are that believe in our principles, and then we're able to raise from our members, you know, sometimes 200, 300, $400,000 for the candidate that we've chosen. So it has allowed us to have a very big impact on a lot of important races.

GROSS: So my understanding is that the people who are members of your group, they write out the check to the candidate that they support or that you've suggested that they support, then they send that check to you and you bundle the checks together so that the checks have more clout because they're bundled together.

Mr. MOORE: That's exactly right, Terry, and in fact, I think this is really the wave of the future. As we look at the new campaign finance laws, I think groups like EMILY's List on the left and groups like the Club for Growth on the right are going to be increasingly influential because the pitch that we make to our members is, if you just write out a $200 check to a candidate, you're just spitting into a huge ocean of money. You're not going to have any real impact on the outcome. But imagine you write your $200 check and there are, you know, 15,000 other Americans who believe the things you do that are also writing 100 or 200 or $1,000 checks. Now all of a sudden your contributions really make a difference. And that's what our members really like about donating through the Club for Growth, is they think their donations really start to have a big impact.

GROSS: Now you've done ads supporting some candidates. You've done ads targeting Republicans for defeat, and this is where you've become very controversial. You've done ads targeting Arlen Specter, Olympia Snowe, George Voinovich for defeat because you don't like their stand on Bush's tax cut policies.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: And you call these people RINOs, and that's an acronym. RINO...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...an acronym for 'Republicans in name only.' Why spend Republican money trying to defeat Republicans?

Mr. MOORE: Well, Terry, because of the way American politics has evolved and also because of what political scientists call gerrymandering, which is where Congress draws the lines for congressional districts in ways that are very friendly to one party or another, it turns out that, for example, in a given election year, like this election of 2004, there are 435 members of Congress who are up for re-election. It turns out that out of those 435, only about 25 or at most 30 of those districts are even competitive between the Republicans and Democrats. So that means 90 percent of these races are really decided not on November 7th but are decided in the primary, either the Democratic primary or the Republican primary.

And so our kind of insight and our forte has really been to say, 'Well, look, if most of the important races are not the general election races but the primaries, let's intervene in the primaries and try to make sure that we're electing to these congressional seats the men and/or women who most closely reflect our values and our principles.' And I think this has been something that's been very effective for us, because a lot of people don't pay much attention to primaries, but as I said, it turns out that most of the races are really decided on primary day, not Election Day.

GROSS: Now that wasn't necessarily the case in Pennsylvania where you took out ads against Senator Arlen Specter...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...and supported Pat Toomey. And a lot of Republicans were afraid that if Toomey won in the primary, that he'd lose in November in the general election.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: Now Specter ended up winning the primary.

Mr. MOORE: Sure.

GROSS: But you know, a lot of Republicans don't support these ads that you've done...

Mr. MOORE: Sure.

GROSS: ...including President Bush's adviser, Karl Rove.

Mr. MOORE: That's right. Well, you know, we're in business not to make Republican operatives like Karl Rove--who's a friend of mine, by the way--we're not in business to make them happy. We're in business to try to promote good policy and to get good people elected to Congress. And our members, Terry, tend to be strong, free-market conservatives first and Republicans second. And in fact, we've even said that if we could find some strong, pro-economic-growth Democrats, we would help them, because what we're most interested in is making sure that America remains a prosperous, high-economic-growth country. And so we put policy ahead of politics.

With respect to this Pennsylvania race, I know that the conventional wisdom is that Pat Toomey could not have won the general election if he had won the primary. We strongly disagree with that. We'll never know for sure now, but we really believe that if Pat Toomey had won that primary, that he would have been the next senator. Now that Arlen Specter has won, we have endorsed Arlen Specter. It was obviously a very tough defeat for us, you know. We spent in that race about $3 million, that is, Toomey and the Club for Growth combined, whereas Arlen Specter spent about 10 million. So we were outspent about 3:1, and amazingly against a 24-year incumbent senator, we came within 1.4 percentage points of beating him. So it was excruciating to lose by such a close margin, but you know, it was fun and our members really felt that we had something important to say, and none of us have really any regrets about that race.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: My guest is Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee whose goal is to elect candidates who support the Reagan vision of limited government and lower taxes.

Now I want to talk to you about a very controversial ad that the Club for Growth funded, and this was an ad that went against Howard Dean in the presidential primary campaign.

Mr. MOORE: Yes. Right.

GROSS: Why did you target him? I mean, it's my understanding that you mostly do ads either favoring Republicans or opposing Republicans. Correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Mr. MOORE: Correct.

GROSS: I thought this was unusual to do an ad about a Democrat.

Mr. MOORE: Well, here was the thinking on that, Terry. This was an ad that ran back in January of this year. It ran in Iowa, mostly in the Des Moines area.

GROSS: As you say, about a Democrat in the primary. I think that's the issue, you know.

Mr. MOORE: Right. Right. Well, here was the thing. At that point, if you recall, Terry, it seemed like Howard Dean--it was almost like a fait accompli that Howard Dean was going to be the nominee. He was way ahead in the polls. He was ahead in about 30 of the 50 states. And we thought, you know, this is a guy with ideas that are, from our standpoint, really very dangerous to our economy. But we were trying to make a point, you know, that Howard Dean was very liberal and that he didn't really represent sort of Main Street Iowa voters' values. And it was sort of, as I said, a playful ad. Most people saw it and kind of laughed at it. But I do think it actually almost inadvertently had a big impact on the outcome of that Iowa presidential primary, because it reinforced this suspicion that a lot of voters had that Howard Dean was just too liberal to win.

GROSS: OK. Well, let's hear the Howard Dean ad that was funded by the Club for Growth.

(Soundbite of political ad)

Unidentified Woman #1: What do you think of Howard Dean's plans to raise taxes on families by $1,900 a year?

Unidentified Man #2: What do I think? Well, I think Howard Dean should take his tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading...

Unidentified Woman #2: ...body-piercing, Hollywood-loving left-wing freak show back to Vermont where it belongs.

Unidentified Man #2: Got it?

Unidentified Announcer: Club for Growth PAC is responsible for the content of this advertising.

GROSS: OK. And so what is wrong with lattes and Volvos?

Mr. MOORE: Well, you know that you asked us about, you know, how we put these ads together, and I remember so vividly when we put that ad together and we were all just sitting around, six or seven of us, just sort of writing the script and thinking of funny things that liberals do. And I have to tell you, Terry, a little insider information, which at one point we had a line in that ad that said 'NPR-listening,' but then we thought it would maybe be better to put 'New York Times-reading.' So anyway, it was a fun ad. As I said, most people thought it was very humorous, but it did have, I think, an impact in reinforcing this message that, you know, maybe Howard Dean was too liberal for America.

GROSS: But why divide the country in terms of lattes and Volvos? Like, really, what does that say to you about--what is wrong with a latte or a Volvo?

Mr. MOORE: You know, what we were really trying to...

GROSS: I won't even get to tattooing, but go ahead.

Mr. MOORE: What we were really trying to do with that ad was just trying to, you know, parody the kinds of things that sort of elite, New York, East Coast liberals do. And you know, this idea of latte-drinking, sushi-eating was all put in in fun. One of the things that was interesting was that, you know, we have that line about Volvo-driving, and I was contacted by the head of the North America sales for Volvo. You know, he was outraged that, you know, we would say that only liberals drive Volvos. But you know, as I said, it was done in a playful way, and I don't think anyone really took any offense by it.

GROSS: So here you are, defining, you know, like, tattoos and lattes and Volvos...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...and The New York Times as elite. But, you know, someone could argue, well, is a Volvo elite, or is elite a car that's far more expensive?

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: You know, is elite a car like a Lexus, or is elite a BMW?

Mr. MOORE: Sure. Right.

GROSS: You know the stereotype of a Volvo, really is that it's like the practical car for parents because it's safe in accidents. I mean, you know what I mean?

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: It's like the sensible shoes of...

Mr. MOORE: Well, we actually were thinking of putting in 'Lexus-driving,' but you know, to be honest with you, Terry, I don't even remember...

GROSS: I'm not trying to defend Volvo.

Mr. MOORE: OK.

GROSS: I'm just trying to figure out, like what makes a consumer choice a sign that you're elitist?

Mr. MOORE: Well, we were trying to think of things that, you know--look, there is a cultural divide in this country. I don't think there's any question about it. There's the red states and the blue states, and you know, there's the coastal regions of the country, California, and the Northeastern region, which are very liberal. Then there's sort of Middle America that is very conservative in the rural areas and so forth. And you know, Iowa is a state that is very at least culturally conservative, and what we were just trying to do was point out to these Iowa voters that, you know, people like Howard Dean from Vermont, you know, maybe don't represent the values that they do.

GROSS: Now the question has been raised particularly by Tom Frank in his latest book, if you're talking about elitism, why define it in terms of this cultural divide about who has piercings and who doesn't, as opposed to defining it financially, like who has a lot of money, who's a millionaire and who's not, who gets the big tax breaks and who doesn't, because...

Mr. MOORE: Well, that's a good point, Terry, because--yeah.

GROSS: ...someone who spends an extra dollar drinking a latte isn't necessarily wealthy; they're not necessarily part of the elite.

Mr. MOORE: Sure.

GROSS: And, you know, somebody who is like a multimillionaire isn't a part of this equation the way you've stated what makes somebody elite.

Mr. MOORE: Sure. Sure. I think that what's going on here is, you know, you're going to have this debate over the next three months as the presidential election gets even more heated up about this idea that John Kerry and John Edwards talk a lot about, about this two Americas, that there's, you know, lower-class America that has fallen behind and has been victimized by George W. Bush's policies, and then there's this upper class which has, you know, greatly benefited from President Bush's policies, and these are Halliburton Republicans and so on.

And one of the points that we're going to be making over and over and over again over the next three months is wait a minute; wait one doggone minute here. How in the world can people like John Edwards and John Kerry, who are both multimillionaires and, you know, John Kerry has, you know, grown up in a life of privilege; he's married up in life; he is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. What in the world does John Kerry know about how the other half lives? And so I think this kind of values issue is going to be very important. And you know, I think George W. Bush is going to have to say, 'Look, my policies have not just benefited rich people, they've benefited all Americans in terms of helping get our economy moving again.' And that's going to be, I think, one of the central issues of this debate, moreover when it comes to some of these more cultural issues.

You know, I think that when you look at, for example, this movie that Michael Moore has come out with that just spews hatred at George W. Bush, you know, I think people like Michael Moore are the cultural elites in this country. Now you know, we could argue about that, but you know, I don't think elitism is necessarily about how much money you have.

GROSS: Then what is it about?

Mr. MOORE: I think it's about people who are in the kind of professions, for example, what I call the talking professions, people who are journalists and policy analysts and people who live in the, you know, kind of areas of the Northeast that sort of frown upon the kind of values of people who live in more of the Midwestern areas. And I think, you know, as much as--we concentrate at the Club for Growth on economic issues, but I think these values issue will be perhaps one of the deciding impacts in this election in 2004.

GROSS: What is a journalist who lives in the Midwest? Are they a part of the elite or are they a part of Midwest?

Mr. MOORE: Well, you got me there. I'd have to know who it is, but you know...

GROSS: Oh. Oh, so wait. So it's not journalists; it's journalists who are what?

Mr. MOORE: Well, I'm not just...

GROSS: Journalists who drink latte.

Mr. MOORE: And you know, another point I would make...

GROSS: Oh, journalists who listen to NPR. Oh, journalists who read The New York Times.

Mr. MOORE: Yeah, especially if they drive Volvos.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. MOORE: But you know, I would add to that, for example, a lot of the, you know, university professors and things like that who, you know, frown upon free-market policies and frown oftentimes about, you know, Christian values. I mean, this whole issue, for example, of gay marriage, I think is one of these issues that will be--you know, a lot of people don't want to talk about that issue. Liberals don't want that to be talked about, but you know, it is an important issue to a lot of Americans in a lot of these important battleground states.

GROSS: Would it be fair to say that it's, like, people who disagree with you who are part of the elite?

Mr. MOORE: No, because look...

GROSS: Is that a bad definition?

Mr. MOORE: ...there are right-wing elites as well. You know, I think the people at the Chamber of Commerce oftentimes are elitist. You know, the difference between a populist and an elitist is that a populist believes that, you know, the people can make their own decisions for themselves. Elitists believe that they should make decisions for people. And we at the Club for Growth think one of the best examples of that is we think people, for example, should be able to invest their own Social Security money and not have the government do it for them. Elites think people can't make decisions themselves and they have to have these professionals do it for them.

Similarly with respect to school reform. You know, our members have always believed that the best education reform is to give every parent in America an opportunity to send their kid to whatever school they want to. Elites think, no, it should be decided by school boards and people who are smart enough to make these decisions for them. So I think that's one of the big differences between liberals and conservatives, is I do think liberals have become the party of the elite.

GROSS: Stephen Moore is the president of the conservative political action committee the Club for Growth and a senior fellow in economics at the Cato Institute. He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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(Announcements)

(Soundbite of music performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band)

GROSS: That's the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New Orleans recorded in New York in 1917. Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews a new CD of some of America's earliest jazz recordings. Also we continue our conversation with Stephen Moore, president of the conservative political action committee the Club for Growth.

(Soundbite of music performed by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with Stephen Moore, the president of the Club for Growth, a political action committee whose goal is to elect candidates who support the Reagan vision of limited government and lower taxes. When we left off we were talking about how the word 'elite' is being used now. Moore describes professors, policy analysts, journalists and liberals as part of the elite.

Do you ever worry that the way some people have defined elite--that it becomes an almost form of anti-intellectualism?

Mr. MOORE: I think that the intellectuals in this country--look, who were the people, for example, in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s talked about how wonderful a system socialism and communism was? It was the elites in America. If you went to the sociology departments and the economic and political science departments in many universities, especially the Ivy League schools, these were cheerleaders for what a wonderful workers' paradise they had set up in countries like China and Russia, as people like Mao were killing tens of millions of their own people. So I do think--you know, there's an old saying that, you know, Marxism is the opiate of intellectuals, and I think there's a lot of truth to that; that elitists don't believe that the common man can make good decisions for themselves.

GROSS: I'm just wondering about the word elite. Again, like, how--you know, what makes somebody elite? Like, university professors don't make a whole lot of money.

Mr. MOORE: Well, I think because they...

GROSS: And, like, what makes them elite and not...

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: ...the people who are making a killing on Wall Street?

Mr. MOORE: Well, there's no question there are a lot of elites on Wall Street, financiers. But I think that when you talk about, for example, university professors, these are people, for example, who talk about what business should and shouldn't do. And one of the points I'd make about these folks is, look, these are people who've never met a payroll in their whole life. They don't have any idea what it is to start a business and what it is to put in, you know, 15 hours a day to get a business off the ground. And then they come in and tell businessmen how their businesses should be run. So that's an example, I think, of an elitist opinion.

GROSS: Have you run a business?

Mr. MOORE: I'm doing one right now, Terry. We have nine employees now. We have a $10 million budget. When we started out we had a bank account with about $3,000. So, yeah, I think of myself as an entrepreneur, at least in the political spectrum.

GROSS: You started that in 1999.

Mr. MOORE: That's right.

GROSS: But before that you were still writing about economics, weren't you?

Mr. MOORE: Sure.

GROSS: Were you an elitist?

Mr. MOORE: Sure. We were doing--I was at the Cato Institute before that and The Heritage Foundation from...

GROSS: Were you an elitist?

Mr. MOORE: No, I--look, I really believe--it isn't about what you do so much as how you view the world. And I do think elites believe that decisions about people's lives should fundamentally be made by elected officials or the United Nations or, you know, school boards, whereas people who are more populist--and I consider myself generally more populist--believe that, 'You know what? Fundamentally people can make the best decisions about themselves, about what's best for themselves, by themselves.' And that's the difference, actually, between capitalism and socialism because, of course, capitalism is about every individual actor in the economy acting in their own self-interest. And you know what? It turns out to be a system that may not be perfect, but it certainly has worked better than anything else that governments have devised.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, our guest is Stephen Moore. He's the president of the Club for Growth, which is a PAC that supports candidates who favor tax cuts. He's also a senior fellow in economics at the Cato Institute.

Now the Cato Institute is a libertarian think tank. Is that a fair description?

Mr. MOORE: Yes. We like to say we want to keep the government out of the boardroom and the bedroom.

GROSS: So what do you think of social conservatives within the Republican Party who want the party to emphasize things like opposing gay marriage...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...anti-abortion and in regulation of things like stem cell research?

Mr. MOORE: Well, I am personally fairly conservative socially myself but, you know, not always. But the Club for Growth--we've concentrated exclusively on economic issues. We, you know, focus on tax cuts and budget reduction and school choice and issues like that. Now on issues like abortion and gay marriage and drug issues and things like that, we think that, you know, this is a big tent party; that Republicans can certainly disagree about their opinions about, you know, pro-life or pro-choice or pro-gay marriage or anti-gay marriage. But our point has always been that, fundamentally, if you're part of a party, which is like a club--if you're going to be part of that club, you have to share some fundamental values.

And we think the one underlying fundamental value that every Republican should believe in and should advance, if they're in elected office, is they should be for cutting people's taxes because the tax load is so heavy today. You know, most Americans are paying 35 to 40 cents out of every dollar they earn in taxes--that this is an abomination. And it hurts our economy. And so we've always said we can agree to disagree on a, lot but the one thing--if you call yourself a Republican, you have to be for lower taxes and smaller government.

GROSS: Let me quote something Paul Weyrich has said. He's a Christian conservative organizer.

Mr. MOORE: Yes, I know Paul.

GROSS: Yes, I knew you did. And he said this in an e-mail newsletter recently. He said, 'I hate to say it, but the conservatives for the most part are not excited about re-electing the president. If the president is embarrassed to be seen with conservatives at the convention, maybe conservatives will be embarrassed to be seen with the president on Election Day.' And he's referring here to the fact that there's cultural conservatives within the Republican Party...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...who don't like the lineup at the Republican Convention, which emphasizes John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki, Zell Miller. Would you agree with Weyrich's perception there or...

Mr. MOORE: Not exactly, Terry. I mean, I think that Paul is right that there has been a lot of frustration among conservatives with George W. Bush's presidency so far. To give you an example, the federal budget has grown a lot under George W. Bush's presidency. In fact, it's grown at about two or three times faster than it did under Bill Clinton. That's kind of interesting, that the budget--the anti-big government party, the Republicans, are growing the budget faster than the supposed big-government party, the Democrats. So that's something that's infuriated a lot of conservatives like myself. There's also been some--you know, there is a riff in the Republican Party between the conservatives and what we call the neoconservatives, who want to advance a kind of Wilsonian foreign policy that wants to make America the policeman of the world. So there are some riffs in the party, no question about it. I think the Democrats have their own riffs.

But I would say this, though, Terry: that George Bush has one huge advantage this year, and that is that he is running against a ticket of John Kerry and John Edwards that is so left wing. I mean, this is not a new Democrat ticket. These are not, you know, Democrats who believe in things like trade and welfare reform and sensible government policy. I mean, these are two of the most liberal senators in the entire United States Congress. So I think that because conservatives are going to be so terrified of the idea of a Kerry-Edwards presidency and vice presidency, that the vast majority of conservatives will come home to George Bush on November--whatever date the election is--November 12th, I think it is.

GROSS: Now let's look at President Bush for a moment. I know that you heartily endorse the tax cut that he's pushed.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: On the other hand, he spent a lot of money, and I know that you don't like it when governments spend a lot of money. And, you know, because of the war in Iraq and the post-war money that we spend, the troops that are still there and, of course, you know, the war on terrorism on the home front, the government's spending a lot of money.

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: Where do you stand on that?

Mr. MOORE: I guess frustrated would be the word, Terry, and I think a lot of our members and a lot of conservatives share that frustration. You know, one of the big differences between Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush--and, by the way, a lot of people say, 'Well, George W. Bush is really--this is like the third Reagan term.' I think that there is a fundamental difference between Reagan and Bush, which is Reagan really did believe, you know, in smaller government. And even though he didn't always succeed, he wanted, you know, to make the free-enterprise, private sector bigger, and he wanted to make government smaller.

I don't think that George W. Bush really believes in smaller government. He does believe in lower taxes, but I think he fundamentally believes governments can do a lot of good things to help people. I disagree with him on that, and I think a lot of conservatives do. And that's the one reservation that we have about George W. Bush. What I can't understand is why liberals are so frustrated with Bush because he's spent so much money on liberal programs.

GROSS: So does this mean you oppose the war in Iraq because it was expensive?

Mr. MOORE: Well, no. I mean, I think that the single most important thing for government to do--I think everyone agrees with this--is that the government has to keep us safe. The national defense is the one thing in the Constitution that the federal government is really assigned to do. So I believe when it comes to the war on terrorism, Terry, that you have spend whatever it takes to wipe terrorism off the face of the Earth. And I don't know what that right price tag is, whether it's going to cost us $50 billion or $500 billion to do that. But I certainly do think it's the proper role of the government to make sure that we are safe from people who would do us harm. Now whether we should have gone into Iraq to keep us safe from terrorists, I'm not an expert on that. I don't have a strong answer one way or the other.

GROSS: My guest is Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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Now I want to get back to the social conservative values vs. economic values and how you balance them both in your life. You wear two hats. You're the president of the Club for Growth, which is a PAC that supports candidates who favor big tax cuts, and you're a senior fellow in economics at the Cato Institute...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...which is a libertarian think tank. And as you said earlier, libertarians want to keep, you know, the government out of our personal business...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...including out of the bedrooms. So where do you stand on something like having a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, which is something the president has said he would like to see, when you're also in the Cato Institute that wants to keep the government out of the bedroom?

Mr. MOORE: Well, I think I would say that this is an issue we just don't talk about at the Club for Growth. We've never brought up...

GROSS: (Laughs)

Mr. MOORE: You know, it's true, though. We've never--we have a rule, for example, at our meetings, Terry, that we never bring up the A-word, abortion. We don't even ask candidates what their opinion is on abortion, and same thing with issues like gay marriage. Now I may have my own personal opinion about it. I tend to be fairly, you know, libertarian. I mean, I do believe that, you know, if what you do, Terry, does not negatively affect my life or my property, you should be able to do what you want. If you want to go home tonight and smoke two joints before you go to bed in your bedroom, I don't have a problem with that. I don't have problems with what people do in the privacy of their own house or bedroom. So I guess that's sort of my 'live and let live' philosophy of life.

GROSS: But what happens when you, through the Club for Growth, support a candidate who is very socially conservative and, you know, does oppose something like gay marriage or abortion when you think the government should be out of that, because whether you ask about it or not, you know their stand...

Mr. MOORE: Well, that's true.

GROSS: ...like Pat Toomey, for instance, who you supported against Arlen Specter.

Mr. MOORE: Look, I mean, most of the candidates we support are socially conservative but not all of them are. One of the complaints that has been made by some of the more--what we call the RINO Republicans is they say, 'Well, you're just really a front group for pro-life.' And I say, 'Wait a minute. How can you say that? We've endorsed many candidates who are not pro-life.' The best example of that, Terry, would be that I've spent the last three months working with Arnold Schwarzenegger out in California to help him balance the budget there. Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of the most liberal Republicans I've ever met in terms of social policy. But he is for keeping taxes low in California and regulations low and trying to get this balanced budget with spending reductions. And so this is a perfect example of what we're about. If you agree with us on economic policy, we don't really care much what your position is about gay marriage or abortion.

GROSS: Yeah. I know, the governor, as you mentioned, recently named you to be on the California Audit Committee...

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: ...which oversees the state's books. So you'll be helping to balance the budget there. Getting back for a moment to the Howard Dean campaign, the anti-Howard Dean ad that you took out...

Mr. MOORE: Yes.

GROSS: ...that your group funded...

Mr. MOORE: You just won't let that one go, will you, Terry?

GROSS: Well, because one of the things in there that, you know, criticized Dean people for was being like pro-Hollywood.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: And, you know, like, who's more Hollywood than Arnold Schwarzenegger or, you know...

Mr. MOORE: Well, touche. No, touche. But I do think Hollywood--look, what really frustrates conservatives, Terry, is that conservatives really believe that Hollywood and the media are very much against them and against, you know, their belief in free markets and a conservative lifestyle. And, you know, this new movie by Michael Moore, which is just an hour and a half diatribe against the Bush presidency, is a perfect example of that, or when you see Barbra Streisand on stage, you know, swearing at the president and, you know--or Whoopi Goldberg I saw recently was, you know, really saying some things that I think the vast majority of Americans would just think showed not a lot of class. And so, yeah, I think Hollywood does not share the kind of values that most Americans do.

GROSS: So I know you're concerned that Hollywood is very liberal. But if you look at the people who have actually entered into politics from Hollywood, you got Ronald Reagan, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, all Republicans.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: Then you got Charlton Heston who headed the NRA. So I don't know. Seems to me...

Mr. MOORE: Well, it's a good point. Maybe it's that when Republicans...

GROSS: Wait. Does Clint Eastwood ever go to you and say, 'Stop it'?

Mr. MOORE: Does what?

GROSS: Does Clint Eastwood ever say to you, 'Stop bashing Hollywood. Make my day'? No?

Mr. MOORE: No. I mean, as I said, you know, before, I do know a lot of these conservatives, the handful of conservatives in Hollywood. And they have really all said to me, you know, 'My political views are a career liability.' Tom Selleck, who's a pretty prominent conservative in Hollywood, has made that point. He has lost roles that he's really wanted in major movies, he believes, because of his political views. So, you know, I do think that you'd probably have more--for all I know, there may be a lot of in-the-closet conservatives in Hollywood who really don't want to come out because they feel like this would really be career-ending. But if you look at the people, you know, that--from Paul Newman to Robert Redford on down the line, Warren Beatty, Barbra Streisand, these are very prominent liberals. I can guarantee you, Terry, that John Edwards and John Kerry are going to raise about five times as much money from Hollywood as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will.

GROSS: You support the free market system, but you're kind of very skeptical about Hollywood. You think Hollywood's very liberal. You've made anti-Hollywood remarks.

Mr. MOORE: Right.

GROSS: You know, a lot of people would say, 'Listen, Hollywood is like the perfect example of, you know, what's good and bad about the free market system.'

Mr. MOORE: I think that's a fair point. You know, I do actually. I mean, look, it turns out that Hollywood is one of our most productive industries in America today, no question about it. When you talk about our major exports, you know, we export our culture through music and through movies and television, and it's been a great American success story. Do I think, you know, that Hollywood in terms of their political persuasion is very liberal? Yes. Do I think sometimes that there's a lot of smut and things that are degrading our culture on TV and the movies? Yes.

And I think actually a lot of Americans, even though they do tune in to this stuff, they probably wouldn't be--you know, they would like to see a cleaning up of Hollywood and TV. I mean, you listen to some of the language that's on TV now, you know, and as a parent of three kids, I'm kind of offended by that. So you're right that, you know, to some--the market is speaking here, and it's true that Hollywood makes great, great movies. I go to the movies as much as anyone. One of the things I've urged conservatives to do, though, was don't go pay $8 or $10 to see Michael Moore's movie because every time you do that, you know, you're putting more money into the pockets of the enemy.

GROSS: Well, that's a political film, you know, so let's take that out of the equation for a second...

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and just look at the fact that sex and violence seems to really sell.

Mr. MOORE: Yeah, sure.

GROSS: So what do you tell people about like Arnold Schwarzenegger's movies, in which, like, you know, scores of people are killed?

Mr. MOORE: Yeah.

GROSS: I mean, and he makes action films. They're about action.

Mr. MOORE: I love Arnold's movies, you know? I really do. I think they're great. I love...

GROSS: So violence isn't, like, an issue for you?

Mr. MOORE: It is for my wife. She doesn't like me taking the boys to those movies, but, you know, I do. I'm just making--I was really making less a point about the content of Hollywood movies as much as the political persuasion of: What do these, you know, Hollywood producers and actors who make millions and millions of dollars do with their money? They have big fund-raisers for John Kerry and John Edwards and Hillary Clinton out in their glitterati homes in Los Angeles. And so I think that a lot of those people sort of frown upon the values of middle America.

GROSS: What do you think is at stake in the presidential election?

Mr. MOORE: I think there are three--I've always told our members there are three reasons that we should be very aggressively for George W. Bush as strong free market conservatives. The first reason is that we have to make the Bush tax cuts permanent because that is so important for our economy. Second of all, I think we've got a great chance of moving towards a private investment alternative to Social Security, so that young workers can now put some portion of their Social Security money into private accounts that they actually own themselves, which would be a huge shift in this country. It would create a massive investor class. And, finally, the next president is probably going to have two or three Supreme Court nominations, and that will really reshape the Supreme Court for the next 40 years. And as free market conservatives, we'd better make sure that those new people put on the court believe in a judicial philosophy where they're not trying to rewrite the Constitution but rather interpret it.

GROSS: Well, Stephen Moore, I want to thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. MOORE: Thank you, Terry. It was a pleasure.

GROSS: Stephen Moore is the president of the conservative political action committee the Club for Growth, and he's a senior fellow in economics at the Cato Institute.

Coming up, Kevin Whitehead reviews a new anthology of jazz recorded before 1920. This is FRESH AIR.

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 2004

TRANSCRIPT TWO:

SHOW: Fresh Air (12:00 Noon PM ET) - NPR

October 2, 2003 Thursday

LENGTH: 5597 words

HEADLINE: Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, discusses the Bush administration's tax plans

TERRY GROSS, host:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Last month, I interviewed Paul Krugman, a columnist for The New York Times and an economics professor at Princeton University. Krugman opposes President Bush's tax cuts and believes that his economic policies could send us into a spiral of fiscal collapse. Krugman said that behind Bush's economic policies is a plan to deprive the government of revenue so that it's forced to dismantle most of the federal system that's been built up since the 1930s.

Krugman cited Grover Norquist as being one of the leading architects of the current administration's policies. We wanted to hear Grover Norquist's point of view, so we invited him to be our guest today on FRESH AIR. He's the president of Americans for Tax Reform. He also organizes other conservative groups under the umbrella of the American Conservative Union. He founded the K Street Project, whose goal is to encourage corporate CEOs to hire lobbyists with Republican affiliations. Norquist also helped write the Republicans' 1994 Contract with America.

For the past 10 years, he's presided over invitation-only off-the-record Wednesday meetings where a group of influential conservative activists, lobbyists, journalists, scholars and politicians gather to discuss the political issues of the day. An article in USA Today referred to Norquist's office as the 'incubator for Bush's political strategy.' I asked Grover Norquist if he directly advises the president about tax cuts.

Mr. GROVER NORQUIST (President, Americans for Tax Reform): Well, actually I started working with the president a couple years before the election. I think he's fairly clear in my view and the view of the American people and the taxpayer movement that they'd like lower taxes, and my consistent advice is tax rates should be lower, taxes should be simpler, clearer, more visible and that we should eliminate the double taxation of income, double and triple. Right now we tax it when you earn it. We tax it when you invest it. We tax it if it's invested inside a corporation. We tax it when it comes out as a dividend. If you're stupid enough to die, they steal half again. So we want to get the government down to taking one bite of the apple.

GROSS: Now the Bush tax cuts would cost us about $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, and we're going to be hundreds of billions of dollars in debt. At the same time, the president wants $87 billion to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think we're in a tough spot, needing a lot of money, to rebuild those two countries at the same time that we're cutting taxes?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, there's a very interesting use of the word 'we.' Every time you use the word 'we,' you meant the government, and I tend to use the word 'we' to mean the American people and to speak of the government as the government. So when the government doesn't take as much of your money next year as it did last year, we have more money. The government has a lower tax rate, and depending on economic growth, may have more or less money, but we, the people, have more money. So it is a good thing for us to have lower taxes.

Now the government spends about 20 percent of--the federal government, national government spends 20 percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country. Twenty percent of everything created in this country is taken by force by the government and spent. That's too high. It is historically too high, and that number needs to be reduced and we need to both reduce the total taxes on us, the American people, and we need to reduce the spending by them, the government.

GROSS: Well, you know, you're talking about 'we.' Should we use the word 'we' to describe our government while, you know, the government has invaded Iraq and fought a war in Afghanistan in our names and...

Mr. NORQUIST: Yeah, that's fair enough, in our names, but that's not the same thing. I wasn't over there. I didn't do it. We didn't do it. The US government, the US Army did it.

GROSS: But they're using your money to do it.

Mr. NORQUIST: That's true. That is true. Yeah...

GROSS: And...

Mr. NORQUIST: ...I just think it's interesting that when somebody says, 'This tax cut costs us,' where are they standing? They're standing in the shoes of the state, not the shoes of the citizenry. Tax cuts do not cost us. Tax cuts benefit us. Tax cuts may, depending on how they're structured, result in the government having fewer resources.

GROSS: Now critics of the president's tax cuts say that it's helping the wealthy a whole lot more than it's helping the middle class or people in the lower middle class. What's your argument in support of those tax cuts?

Mr. NORQUIST: Yeah. I'm actually old enough to be rather tired of the class warfare argument, and it's nonsense on a number of scales. First of all, when you talk about rich and poor people in America, you have to ask, unlike, say, Britain of 200 years ago or Saudi Arabia today, rich and poor are not things that you tag somebody and they live with all their life. There's some new data from the Census Bureau. Of all those people who were in poverty between 1996 and 1999, that four-year period, 34 percent left poverty within four months of entering it. So a third of poor people during that period were only poor for four months or less. Eighty percent of the people who were poor during that period were poor for less than a year. Somebody loses a job, something goes wrong, they're poor, then they get a job, and they're not poor again. Of all the people who were poor during the entire period of '96 to '99, one out of 17 people who were ever poor were poor for the whole period.

Go to rich people. This is one of the games that the left used to play when we'd cut the capital gains tax. They'd say, 'Only rich people or mostly rich people pay capital gains taxes, like when you sell your house.' Well, guess what? If you make $30,000 a year and you sell your $100,000 house one year and you go back to making $30,000 a year, during the year in which you paid the capital gains tax on the house, you show up as having made $100,000, and then they say, 'Only people who make $100,000 get a capital gains tax.' It's just nonsense.

People get poorer, they get rich. Of the families in the lowest income quintile, the lowest fifth, in 1988, for instance, half of them moved to a higher quintile in the next 10 years. So they moved from the bottom 20 to the between 20 and 40 or higher. Forty-seven percent in the highest 20 percent dropped to a lower one within 10 years. There's a tremendous amount of economic mobility, and so when people try and use the kind of rhetoric that might have been clever in East Germany in 1957, they miss that they're talking to the American people.

GROSS: OK. But we're talking about, for instance, the elimination of the estate tax. The estate tax is only paid by somebody who gets over $2 million in inheritance. So, you know, when you get out of poverty and you cross that line which is--What is it, like, $18,000 or something that's officially poverty line?

Mr. NORQUIST: Depends on how many kids you have. Yeah.

GROSS: Right. OK. So when you cross that, maybe you're making, like, $20,000 or something. That's not going to help you with the estate tax. I mean, you're talking about $2 million. That's a line people don't cross a lot. That's--I don't think that's...

Mr. NORQUIST: Yeah, the good news about the move to abolish the death tax, the tax where they come and look at how much money you've got when you die, how much gold is in your teeth and they want half of it, is that--you're right, there's an exemption for--I don't know--maybe a million dollars now, and it's scheduled to go up a little bit. However, 70 percent of the American people want to abolish that tax. Congress, the House and Senate, have three times voted to abolish it. The president supports abolishing it, so that tax is going to be abolished. I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax. I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.' And this country, people who may not make earning a lot of money the centerpiece of their lives, they may have other things to focus on, they just say it's not just. If you've paid taxes on your income once, the government should leave you alone. Shouldn't come back and try and tax you again.

GROSS: Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Did you just...

Mr. NORQUIST: Yeah?

GROSS: ...compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?

Mr. NORQUIST: No, the morality that says it's OK to do something to do a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is OK because they didn't target everybody, just a small percentage. What are you worried about? It's not you. It's not you. It's them. And arguing that it's OK to loot some group because it's them, or kill some group because it's them and because it's a small number, that has no place in a democratic society that treats people equally. The government's going to do something to or for us, it should treat us all equally. And the argument that Bill Clinton used when he wanted to raise taxes in '93 was 'I'm only going to tax the top 2 percent. So this doesn't affect the rest of you. I'm only going to get some of these guys; not you, others.'

The challenge there when people use that rhetoric in addition to the fact that I think it's immoral to separate the society by--when South Africa divided people by race, that was wrong. When East Germany divided them by income and class, that was wrong. East Germany was not an improvement over South Africa. Dividing people so that you can mug them one at a time is a bad thing to do. Whether you're doing it on racial grounds, religious grounds, or whether you work on Saturdays or not grounds, on economic grounds.

GROSS: So you see taxes as being the way they are now terrible discrimination against the wealthy comparable to the kind of discrimination of, say, the Holocaust?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, what you pick--you can use different rhetoric or different points for different purposes, and I would argue that those who say, 'Don't let this bother you; I'm only doing it'--I, the government. The government is only doing it to a small percentage of the population. That is very wrong. And it's immoral. They should treat everybody the same. They shouldn't be shooting anyone, and they shouldn't be taking half of anybody's income or wealth when they die.

GROSS: My guest is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

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GROSS: My guest is Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

When all the Bush tax cuts go through and we have, you know, billions and billions and billions of dollars less for the government to work with, some...

Mr. NORQUIST: Trillions, yes.

GROSS: Trillions, yes. Some tough choices will have to be made. What are you recommending that the president cut? What kind of operations and services and so on do you think should go?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, I think what you have to look at in some cases is whether something that's being run by the government now needs to always be run by the government. This administration has proposed that we actually enact the law which has been there since the '50s, which is if something is being done by a government employee at the national level, and it's actually available to be done through the Yellow Pages, like people cutting grass, or serving food at a restaurant, it's not an inherently governmental task. The guys who cut the grass at the Pentagon don't have to be soldiers. They could be contractors who cut grass at the bank when they're not cutting grass at the Pentagon. There are 850,000 present government positions, government jobs, full-time jobs, for the federal government, which is almost half of all federal civilian employment, that the government itself says is not inherently governmental.

We don't want the private sector being a judge necessarily or executing people or running or being in the military--being a soldier. When we have begun to competitively source those jobs, let's say, here's a task that the government does right now, we're going to let the private sector bid on it, and then either the present government workers reorganize themselves, come up with a way to do it less expensively and they win the contract, which often happens, or the private sector contractor gets the job. It has resulted in a 30 percent reduction in the cost of providing that service. Were we to competitively source all of the available jobs that the government itself admits don't have to be done by the government, that would save $25 billion every year from now out, $25 billion. That's a start, and that's not a reduction in service. That would be an improvement in services.

GROSS: The reverse way of looking at that would be that a lot of people who--a lot of workers who have federal positions wouldn't have federal positions and they'd be getting paid less. So it's potentially another example of how working people end up on the downside of the tax cuts because now you're taking jobs, you're outsourcing them, those people will be paid less money, and these are also the people who aren't getting a lot of money from the tax cuts.

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, if putting government people on government payrolls made a society or a people wealthy, the Soviet Union, East Germany and Romania would have been very wealthy societies. In point of fact, putting people on government payrolls doesn't make the society or the people involved better off. What these competitively sourcing jobs are doing is taking a project and deciding to do it and bid it so different people come and say, 'We could do that in different ways.' We have the highest income in the United States per capita, and the most vibrant free market and private sector. These two go together. It's not as if something isn't done by the government that it's being done by someone in the private sector getting paid less. It's probably a bunch of people getting paid more who don't have the same work rules and who don't have some of the anti-productivity rules that some of the civil service people put in in terms of their inability to be more flexible.

GROSS: You've said that over the next 25 years you'd like to see the government shrink by half.

Mr. NORQUIST: Yes.

GROSS: What would happen in your plan to public schools, the police, firefighters, highways and homeland security?

Mr. NORQUIST: Certainly. I would like to see--and the goal of the center right coalition in America today is to drop the cost of government, federal, state and local together, in half, with several measures: one, total spending as a percentage of the economy. Right now, government spending is about 30, 32 percent of the economy. I want to take that down to 16 percent of the economy over 25 years. How do you do that? You mentioned roads. Roads built by the federal government cost 30 percent more than they have to because there is a racist law which was passed in the 1930s called the Davis-Bacon Act. It was designed--and the people on the floor of the House and Senate who passed it said clearly it was designed to keep black people out of the construction industry because blacks were moving up from the South working on highways, and they only wanted white guys to have those jobs. This Davis-Bacon Act, which requires, quote, unquote, "prevailing wages," meaning union wages, to be paid, means that you can't have different companies bidding, and it bids up the cost of building highways by about one-third.

GROSS: So what you're saying is by not paying a union wage, by lowering the wages of those workers, we could cut more taxes.

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, you had said what services...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. NORQUIST: ...do you have to get rid of to drop the cost of government significantly.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. NORQUIST: And my argument is you don't have to drop service. I'm not talking about less roads. I want more roads, not less roads.

GROSS: But you're talking about lower wages. Am I reading you wrong? Just tell me, am I reading you wrong, that--paying workers less...

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, not necessarily lower wages...

GROSS: Yeah.

Mr. NORQUIST: ...because over the course of a year, you're talking about people having full-time jobs for the whole year. What you do with the Davis-Bacon Act is you spike people's income for a short period, and then they go unemployed for a longer period. So I would argue that you're talking about having a wealthier and more successful set of employees in non-union construction, which is why most construction people are non-union by choice. And so the Davis-Bacon Act is an example of a law. When you compare government education and independent education in this country, independent education costs about half as much and provides a better education than government education, on average.

GROSS: Do you think we should do away with public schools?

Mr. NORQUIST: No. I think what we should do is allow those tax dollars which flow to education to go to parents and through children, not through bureaucracies. Right now, you know, the bureaucracy of the Catholic school system in New York is a fraction per pupil of the government-run bureaucracy. I'm speaking to you from Washington, DC. We have a very extensive and very expensive bureaucracy and a very lousy school system that does not educate children. Less than half of the money gets anywhere close to educating children; the rest goes to the bureaucracy. And we ought to be in the business of saying no money to expand the bureaucracy; money should flow with students. This, in some states and cities, is done through vouchers or scholarships. And you say, 'Look, if our city or state is going to spend 5,000 or $7,000 per kid, the money flows with the child.' And that's when parents will get respect and decent treatment from the bureaucrats and the teachers in schools.

GROSS: So you're basically talking about vouchers?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, vouchers, scholarships. I mean, all of those would make sure that the parents and the children are in control, rather than the bureaucracies.

GROSS: Do you think that--you know, a lot of states in the United States are complaining now that they're not getting the money from the federal government that they need for homeland security. How do you propose dealing with the issue of homeland security? And the need for that is at an all-time high, at a time when cutting taxes is also at an all-time high.

Mr. NORQUIST: OK. It is true that some incompetent politicians at the state and local level have argued that they're not getting as much money from the federal government as they would like. It is probably true they're not getting as much money from the federal government as they would like. I am looking at a chart which shows the growth of federal grants to states in 2000, up 5 percent, then up 10 percent in 2001, up 10 percent in 2002, and up 15 percent in 2003. I know that the politicians at the state and local level who do not do their jobs well like to blame other people. So do four-year-olds. We don't put up with it in four-year-olds, and we shouldn't put up with in incompetent mayors and incompetent governors.

One of the good things about the states--and I am a Ronald Reagan federalist, meaning I like 50 states not because they're closer to the people; that's nonsense. I'm not any closer to my governor than I am to the president. But there are 50 of them, and when they do something really stupid, you can move. You can move your money. And people do move between states when states behave badly. It's a reason people leave New York or, 20 years ago, were leaving Massachusetts, because they were providing very bad government. Why did people leave New York City in great numbers prior to Rudy Giuliani's change of crime and tax policies? So it is a good thing that states compete to provide the best government at the lowest cost. And people decide what level of government they're willing to pay for, and they want.

GROSS: Grover Norquist is the president of Americans for Tax Reform. He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

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(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, Paul Newman talks with us from the set of "Empire Falls," the movie adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. He plays the stage manager in a production of "Our Town" that will be shown Sunday on CBS. And we continue our conversation with Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Let's get back to our interview with Grover Norquist. He's the president of Americans For Tax Reform and a leading advocate of cutting taxes and reducing federal spending. He also organizes other conservative groups under the umbrella of the American Conservative Union.

With the kind of tax cuts that we're already getting and the additional tax cuts that you would like to see, what would you recommend happen with Social Security and Medicare?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, Social Security--the good news is that there's an emerging consensus in the United States that we need to do what President Bush recommended in the last campaign, and that is to take--begin the process of moving it from a Ponzi scheme--a pay-as-you-go scheme where you pay your Social Security FICA taxes this week, and next week it goes to pay for somebody who's retired and there's no savings for you; there is no account for you; there is just debt--to one where you take your FICA tax or the equivalent of your FICA tax and put part of it--and I would like eventually to phase in all of it--into a 401(k) or an IRA or a personal savings account. Were we to have started 40 years ago and said to everyone, 'Your FICA taxes will go into a personal savings account that you can retire on,' people would be retiring with hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets, including low-income people, and have much more resources each month because that money would have accumulated and increased in value over time.

So the good news is that that poll's at 70 and 80 percent support, so the tremendous level of support for making that move; and the younger you are, the more anxious people are to make that change because they do not believe Social Security as presently structured will provide them any decent retirement, and they're right to not believe that.

GROSS: Well, a couple of things. First of all, I think a lot of people would disagree that Ponzi scheme is an appropriate word for Social Security. I mean it's true that the money you put into Social Security supports the generation that has already retired, and then the next generation should be putting money in that supports you, and so on. That's different than a Ponzi scheme in which the people at the bottom never get any return.

But, you know, there is a fear on the part of the many critics of your scheme, is that, you know, first of all, unless you have money to put into these 401(k)s, you're not going to get much back. And there was, you know, this kind of guarantee of Social Security for working people. The stock market can fall. You can make bad investments and end up with little or nothing in the alternate scheme to Social Security. You're not concerned about that?

Mr. NORQUIST: I am concerned the demagogues of the left will trot that out again. I'm less concerned because they've done it before and nobody's buying. The idea that your money is safe because the government has it is an interesting concept, but not one that impresses the American people. You don't have to save money in stocks and bonds; you can do it with the bank. And Social Security is only there for people who work anyway, and so it's not like you get Social Security benefits for free.

If you simply take the money that was put into the FICA program on your behalf, theoretically on your behalf and given to somebody else, if you'd taken that money and invested it in a bond or in the stock market at any time during the last 70 years, if you'd invested at the high point and taken out at the low point, you'd still be better off than the government's present program, which is a Ponzi scheme, which is they promise to invest your money and they don't invest it, they give it to previous investors.

GROSS: Just proceeding down the line here of changes that you'd like to make, what changes would you want to make in Medicare because of cut taxes?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, whether you cut taxes or not cut taxes, you have to reform Medicare. It's going bankrupt. And Medicare, with no changes, goes bankrupt within the next 20 years. It's in worse shape than Social Security. It needs to be reformed, not because of any tax cuts. You can't erase taxes fast enough to save the present system. It needs to be reformed because it has got financial problems. I would suggest that we give people more options rather than have one-size-fits-all situations, which is what Medicare does. The federal government runs a program for its employees, which gives them quite a number of different options: medical savings accounts, you know, different kinds of ways to prepay or insure for health care.

At bottom, monopolies do a poor job of providing services to people at a reasonable cost. That is true whether it's the steel mill that has a government monopoly or whether it's a government retirement program or government health-care program. Monopolies don't work well.

GROSS: So are you talking about doing away with Medicare and creating a different alternative?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, I wouldn't--you can play semantic games and say if you reform it and give people more options, you've done away with it, I'd say leave the present program there for anyone who wants it and have alternative options if people would prefer. All of the people who want to reform Social Security say, 'Look, leave the present system there for anyone who is uncomfortable changing anything.' In any society there are some people that just want to stay with the status quo, even if the status quo makes them poor, because they just hate risk. So if you want to stay with Social Security, you want to stay with Medicare, do so, but there should be other options that would allow people medical savings accounts, which are terribly helpful, very important. I think that people who don't want people to have options because if they had options they wouldn't take the government monopoly's program are not acting in the best interests of the people that they claim to represent.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Grover Norquist. He's the president of Americans For Tax Reform, and he has worked very closely with President Bush in formulating the tax-cut plan and he's one of the strongest advocates in America for major tax cuts.

Are there any services that you think taxes should support? Do you think that the American public should be taxed to support any of the services that we have now?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, at the national level, we spend right now 3 1/2 percent of GDP on defense, 3 1/2 percent of GDP. All federal spending, national spending, national government spending, is 20 percent of the economy. I think national defense is very important. I think 3 1/2 percent's probably a little high, but 2 percent--we could run the planet for spending 2 percent of GDP if we spent it competently. We're doing pretty well at 3 percent and we ought to get a little more efficient and effective there. So yeah, I think we can rein in spending. I think we ought to have strong economic growth over the next several years in the...

GROSS: But in addition to defense, are there any services that the government should supply?

Mr. NORQUIST: Oh, certainly, yes. Protecting property rights, making sure that bad guys--you know, if they steal things or shoot somebody that they get arrested and prosecuted. Now I don't think that the government has to build the prisons. When you have privately built prisons, they cost half as much as when the government builds them. There are privately run prisons in this country, too, for a lot of prisoners. So some stuff the government does can be contracted out. There are half a million government police in the country and one million private-sector guards in the country. So in some senses police protection is already two-thirds privatized. I do think a lot of arrest powers need to be in the hands of government policemen.

So, yeah, I mean, there are a fair number of things the government can and should do. They should run national defense, they should run a police force at the state and local level, and courts to protect property rights. I mean, the reason we're rich isn't that we live in America and it isn't that we're white or Protestant or Western or anything like that. It's because we respect property rights and we have the rule of law. And people from all over the world, all religions, all faiths, all ethnic backgrounds, thrive under those rules. And in other countries where they don't have those rules, they're poor. So it's very important that the government protect property rights, freedom of contract, that sort of thing.

GROSS: Your group, Americans For Tax Reform, has constructed something called the Taxpayer Protection Pledge...

Mr. NORQUIST: Yes.

GROSS: ...which you administer to political candidates, and the pledge reads 'I pledge to the taxpayers that I will oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increases taxes.' Is cutting taxes almost like a religion to you?

Mr. NORQUIST: No. It's an important political principle, and politics and religion are two different things and ought to be. But we have 217 members of the US House who've signed that pledge never to raise taxes, 42 senators, one president, 1,200-plus state legislators and eight governors, and my goal is to get a lot more of the state legislators and a lot more of the governors. For starters, the government ought not to be taking more money from the American people, because in every city, every state at the national level, it is today spending too much, taxing too much and wasting too much.

GROSS: You are very anti-government in a lot of ways. I mean, although you're very close to people in government and have helped many of them get elected, you at the same time seem very alienated and even opposed to a lot of facets of government. I'm wondering, what were some of the key incidents that shaped you in that position?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, I'm in favor of a healthy and limited government. I mean, if you're looking at somebody with lung cancer and, say, you cut the cancer out, that doesn't make you anti-lung. I want a government that protects property rights and leaves people alone and says foreigners can't come mess with us and criminals shouldn't and can't come mess with us. Those are legitimate functions of a government. Beyond that, the government becomes abusive, it becomes tyrannical. And I guess there are some--but, you know, even completely tyrannical governments provide some services, but that doesn't justify the tyranny.

GROSS: When Paul Krugman was on FRESH AIR last month, The New York Times economics columnist, he described the Bush administration as revolutionaries because of all the things they wanted to change in America, including the cutting of taxes and the cutting of many government programs. Do you think of yourself as a revolutionary?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, the good thing about being an American conservative is that you can be both traditionalist and revolutionary, because European conservatives are people who think that everybody on this side of the river is a good guy and everybody on that side of the river is a bad guy, or that my religion's better than your religion or we like the king or something stupid like that. American conservativism harkens back to our American tradition, which is one of armed resistance in central government. It is a very revolutionary idea. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were and are revolutionary documents in the course of a human history, the idea that people should be free and independent and autonomous, to the point where they should be armed, and that the government ought not to be pushing people around and has no divine right to mess with you and shove you around and steal your money and steal your property and tell you what to do and what church or synagogue or mosque to go to. These are very revolutionary ideas.

GROSS: OK. Thank you so much for talking with us.

Mr. NORQUIST: Take it easy.

GROSS: Grover Norquist is the president of Americans For Tax Reform.

Coming up, Paul Newman. This is FRESH AIR.

LOAD-DATE: October 3, 2003

TRANSCRIPT THREE:

CNN

SHOW: CNN SUNDAY MORNING 07:00

July 27, 2003 Sunday

Transcript # 072703CN.V46

HEADLINE: Interview With Roger Hickey, Grover Norquist

GUESTS: Roger Hickey, Grover Norquist

BYLINE: Chuck Roberts

HIGHLIGHT:
Roger Hickey and Grover Norquist debate the wisdom of tax cuts.

BODY:
CHUCK ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Parents getting these checks will welcome the extra cash but critics are questioning the wisdom of such payouts at a time of deficits and cutbacks. Two guests join us now, from Washington, to talk this over. Roger Hickey is co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, and Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Welcome, gentlemen. Thanks for coming in so early on a Sunday.

ROGER HICKEY, CO-DIRECTOR, CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE: Good to be with you.

GROVER NORQUIST, PRES., AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM: Thank you.

ROBERTS: Grover Norquist, what do you think, is there ever a bad time to cut taxes.

NORQUIST: Well, it's always a good time to cut taxes. And President Bush and the Republican Congress have cut taxes three times in three years, reducing taxes for all Americans. And in point of fact, the House of Representatives has voted to provide the expanded child tax credit for all Americans and to make it permanent.

The Democrats don't want middle-class Americans to have a permanent per-child tax credit, so they've been opposing getting this even to the poorest Americans.

ROBERTS: And what about the surplus? What happen to that?

NORQUIST: Well, two things -- well, three things happened to the surplus. One, the economy started turning down even before this presidency began. It is the lack of economic growth that has turned the surplus into a deficit. And out first responsibility is to get economic growth again.

Obviously, the response to September 11 has also reduced some of that surplus. Only about a quarter of the change in the surplus has anything to do with tax policy. Many of the tax cuts, that we do need, are still being phased in.

So, the deficit is a problem but if flows from the need for economic growth.

ROBERTS: Roger Hickey, what do you think? Is the timing right? Is it fair?

HICKEY: Well, listen, we just passed a $350 billion tax cut for just about everybody in the economy, especially millionaires. And now, when it was discovered that the tax cut for low-income people, earning less than $28,000, was somehow was left out of that tax package, the White House was embarrassed. They said they'd take steps to include those people and so the Senate passed the bill.

It's the House of the Representatives and the failure of this administration to push for it, that has left these people, making less than $28,000 out of the tax bill.

NORQUIST: That's simply not true. The House of Representatives has passed that tax cut for everybody, but the attached to it, making permanent, tax reduction for middle-class Americans. It's the Democratic party which opposes that.

Go out to California, what is Governor Gray Davis doing? He has tripled the tax per car, particularly hard-hitting low-income citizens in California. The Democratic Party, unfortunately, simply wants more money to spend on bureaucrats and they don't care who they take it from.

Governor Davis has declared war on low-income Americans in California, which is why they're looking to recall him.

HICKEY: Listen, I repeat, we have just given a huge tax cut to millionaires, but we can't -- the Republican Congress cannot find it's way to give a tax cut to the people who really need it. The low-income people who will spend it. That's under $28,000, that's most of us in America.

(CROSS TALK)

HICKEY: And they have somehow found a way to ignore the people who really need the tax cut.

NORQUIST: Nice try, but it's not true. Go look it up. The House of Representatives have already passed it. It was in Bush's original bill, Democrats who wanted the tax cut to get small took it out. That's from the Democrats who claim they care about low-income people.

HICKEY: The Senate passed the tax cut for low-income people. The House passed a bill that loaded it up with all kinds of extras. It's a $3.5 billion problem, they made it cost $85 billion.

NORQUIST: The problem...

HICKEY: That's not solving the problem, and it hasn't passed as a result.

NORQUIST: According to this Democrat, the problem is giving permanent tax relief to middle-income Americans. That's not a problem. That's what the Republican Congress and the president want to do.

The Democrats can fight this all they want, but in point of fact, they want higher taxes. We see Gray Davis attacking the taxpayers of California. One of the taxes that is most unfair to all Americans, low-income people, is the 3 percent federal excise tax on your phone. The Republican Congress voted to abolish it. Bill Clinton vetoed that. Look at your phone bill. It is very expensive for lower-income Americans. And the Democrats said they wanted the money.

HICKEY: This is all a smoke screen. The bill has not passed the Congress because the House of Representatives loaded it up with all kinds of extra things.

Either the president picks up the phone and tells Tom DeLay to pass this tax cut for low-income people or people in our coalition are going to meet the president every place he appears in the country and demand to know why he's only for the rich and not for working families.

NORQUIST: So, this is why it's just nonsense. The Republican Congress, the House, has passed a tax credit for all working Americans. He doesn't want middle Americans to get a tax cut, and so he's saying that's loading it up. Well, the Democratic Party has a very odd idea of who should get tax cuts and it's not people who work for a living. The Republican Party has passed it for everybody.

ROBERTS: What do you think will happen if there is a second Bush administration? Do you think there will be bitter pills to swallow? That we're going to have to pay the piper at some point in the second administration? There were making these easy decisions now, we'll have to make the tough ones later?

NORQUIST: Well, we'll have to keep reducing taxes to get the economy growing faster. We do need to reign in spending. There are some real challenges with continued overspending over the last 10 or 20 years. The government continues to spend too much money at the federal level, but we have very important reforms.

We've got to save the Social Security system, which is going bankrupt for younger Americans. President Bush has put forward proposals to reform it for all citizens. They are very important reforms to make, but we are beginning to turn the economy around.

HICKEY: I don't think there is going to be a second Bush administration, because most Americans see that he's being incredibly irresponsible in his tax and budget policies. He's giving tax cuts to the rich that do not improve the economy and yet he is refusing to help the people who he needs to vote for him in the next election.

It's not going to happen because the Bush administration is clear only for a small minority of the population and a Democratic administration will have to clean up the mess that he's created in the budget.

ROBERTS: Well, you can never get two economists to agree on anything, and I guess we can't get either of you two to agree on it. But we thank you both for your opinions.

Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future and Grover Norquist, president for Americans for Tax Reform.

HICKEY: Good to be with you.

NORQUIST: Thank you. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com

LOAD-DATE: July 27, 2003

TRANSCRIPT FOUR:

SHOW: Capital Report (7:00 PM ET) - CNBC

May 13, 2004 Thursday

HEADLINE: Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum and Pat Buchanan of MSNBC discuss criticism from conservatives towards Bush

ANCHORS: ALAN MURRAY

BODY:
ALAN MURRAY, co-host:

Welcome back.

President Bush speaks tonight at the American Conservative Union's 40th anniversary gala, this at a time when a growing number of conservative pundits are criticizing the president and some of his policies. Why the conservative unrest? Well, joining me now: Pat Buchanan, MSNBC political analyst; Phyllis Schlafly, president of the Eagle Forum, and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and all dressed up for the gala to come.

Mr. GROVER NORQUIST (President, American for Tax Reform): Yes.

BORGER: Thank you, all three of you, for being here. Phyllis, I'll start with you. We've been through a couple of weeks here when you have had Bob Novak, George Will, Bill Kristol, David Brooks all write columns that have been surprisingly critical of the president. What's going on?

Ms. PHYLLIS SCHLAFLY (Eagle Forum President): Well, there are some things to be upset about. I particularly am upset about the way the feminists have taken, really, large strides in the military, and now we see that in the pictures. And the women had no business guarding Iraqi prisoners.

MURRAY: You don't think there should have been women in the Abu Ghraib prison?

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Absolutely not. In was in 1977 that the Supreme Court held that women were not proper guards of Alabama male prisoners. Now I'm sure the criminals in Alabama are no worse than the Iraqis.

MURRAY: Yeah. Well, but, Grover, this is a president who has spent an awful lot of time trying to tend to his conservative base. So how do you explain this kind of commentary?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, two things. I think if you look at issues such as domestic issues, the president's tax cuts--three years, three tax cuts, significant tax reduction and an economy turning around as a result. There's a great deal of happiness and support for that and appreciation of it. I'm on the board of the National Rifle Association; he's been very good on the Second Amendment. We're hoping he holds tight on killing the assault weapons ban later this fall. But on a number of those issues, the pro-life community has had a number of successes that were only made possible by the president.

MURRAY: So why the discontent?

Mr. NORQUIST: Well, they're still arguing on foreign policy.

MURRAY: Yeah. Well, foreign policy does seem to be a lot of--I want to read you what George will wrote and then get to you jump into this. He said, 'This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and having thought to have second thoughts.'

PAT BUCHANAN (MSNBC): We're talking about Iraq, and there were a number of conservative columnists, Novak among them--Buchanan, Sobran, Sam Francis and others and I think even Phyllis--some of whom were very critical of the fact that we didn't think we ought to go to war. And now they realize the president did not think it through. But his real problem, Alan, comes from the populist right and Reagan Democrats over two issues: the loss of manufacturing jobs because of these trade deals and the fear of outsourcing; and, second, the firestorm over this amnesty for illegal aliens, which was a very foolish thing to, quote, "reach out" to the Hispanics. And there was a tremendous backlash on it, and I think it's going to hurt the president. And those are the votes right in the middle that he needs.

MURRAY: But the judge...

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Pat's right. I think at the grass roots, the amnesty was the biggest blunder. It's the issue I hear more about at the grass roots than anything else.

MURRAY: Really?

Ms. SCHLAFLY: People were very upset about that. And we hope that they've realized it was a mistake.

MURRAY: In terms of manufacturing jobs, Grover, the jobs are now in the last couple of months coming back.

Mr. NORQUIST: We've had about 300,000 new jobs two months ago, 280,000 jobs this last month. We'll be increasing jobs at about 200,000 to 300,000 a month. There are five more first Fridays where they announce the job creation for the month. Those are five weekends where the good economic news is going to dominate that weekend.

BUCHANAN: He's lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs, and that's one in every six has vanished since he took office--is the problem. And today they announced the biggest merchandise trade deficit in history. So that clearly--maybe the manufacturing jobs have just turned around after 44 months of losses, but that's going to be a problem through November. But if there is good news, Grover's right, there is good news in the monthly numbers.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: But on the other hand, I was going to say, we look at the alternative, and I think that's why Bush's ratings, when you compare them to Kerry...

MURRAY: Stay up.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: ...are staying up, because Bush is very likable and Kerry is not likable.

MURRAY: That's what unites all of you going to this dinner tonight.

BUCHANAN: Kerry unites us all.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Yeah.

MURRAY: All right. Here's what I want to ask you. So Bush is going to make a speech tonight.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: And we're all going to cheer.

MURRAY: And you're all going to cheer. But I want each of you to tell me what it is you would really like to hear the president say that you haven't been hearing from him?

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Oh, I think I would like him to stand up--he has one line in his stump speech that i very good; that, 'We are not going the stand for the activists judges,' who are doing things like same-sex marriage and killing the Pledge of Allegiance and so forth.

MURRAY: Right.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: And that's very popular, and we want to him come out loud and strong on that.

MURRAY: Grover Norquist?

Mr. NORQUIST: I think going back to his earlier calls for an ownership society, reforming Social Security so that all Americans can save more directly for their retirement.

BUCHANAN: President doesn't agree with me on trade or immigration. So what I...

MURRAY: He's not going to say anything you tell him to say.

BUCHANAN: Not going to say anything. But what I'd like is for him to stand up to say, 'Listen, if we're elected to a second term, we're going to reform,' as Phyllis says, 'the United States Supreme Court. It's going to be a Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas court. And I will see to it.' And that is the issue with John Kerry, who will give you Ruth Bader Ginsburg all the way. Right, Phyllis?

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Right. Right.

MURRAY: I'm surprised by how little the three of you have been talking about Iraq here, which is clearly the thing that has had him in the soup for the last couple weeks and is causing his poll numbers to drop.

BUCHANAN: Well, but, I mean, does anyone--no one here thinks that John Kerry--we may disagree on Iraq...

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Well, he wants to turn it over to the UN.

BUCHANAN: ...but John Kerry agrees with the president.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: That's a no-win situation.

MURRAY: The president wants to turn it over to the UN.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: No, no. Kerry wants to turn it over to the UN.

MURRAY: Both of them say pretty much the same thing.

Ms. SCHLAFLY: Well, not like Kerry. He wants to turn it over. And they are completely corrupt, and that's the worst of all worlds.

MURRAY: Grover?

Mr. NORQUIST: I think to the--Kerry has really put himself largely where the president was, although he would more emphasize the UN. So I don't know that you find a lot of daylight there. If you're looking on for a peace candidate, it's Nader. It's not Kerry.

BUCHANAN: Yeah. Alan, when we hear the word 'multilateralism,' we reach for our revolvers.

MURRAY: All right. We're going to leave it at that. Pat Buchanan, Grover Norquist and Phyllis Schlafly, thank you, all three of you. Enjoy the dinner. Pat, I'm sorry you weren't invited.

BUCHANAN: They don't invite me to these things, Alan.

MURRAY: I don't know what you've done to these people.

All right. Coming up, Nick Berg was laid to rest in Pennsylvania today. While his family blasted Donald Rumsfeld for his brutal death, we're go to Berg's hometown for an update. You're watching CAPITAL REPORT on CNBC. Don't go away.

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LOAD-DATE: May 14, 2004

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