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Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) has become the latest Republican politician to see the writing on the wall and break with anti-tax guru Grover Norquist. America has voted for socialism, and socialism is what it is going to get, and the statesmanlike Saxby is not going to be the one who stands athwart history and shouts, “Stop!” And yet, as craven as Chambliss’s capitulation to the forces of unrestrained government power is – and it is craven indeed – there is one thing the august Georgia solon has right: it’s time to break with Grover Norquist. “I care more about this...

Top Republican Senator ditches Norquist anti-tax pledge A top Republican senator is casting aside an anti-tax pledge he signed, saying that solving the country’s looming fiscal crisis is more important than honoring the decades-old pact. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., broke ranks with other conservatives Wednesday when he made the remarks to a local television station. Chambliss is a member of the Gang of Six, a bipartisan group of senators tasked with finding a solution to the country's fiscal woes.

Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist slammed for radicalizing Washington Washington is more dysfunctional than it has been in 40 years, and while Democrats have deserved their share of the blame over the years, today "the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party," write Thomas E. Mann and Norman Ornstein in the Washington Post. What makes their column particularly interesting is that Ornstein is not liberal, but a resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Together, they call the GOP an "insurgent outlier in American politics" because of the...

This debt debate comes down to negotiables and non-negotiables for each side. Negotiables are things they are willing to put in play to achieve their goals. Non-negotiables are things they need to keep of the table at all costs. Both sides, not surprisingly have non-negotiables that involve keeping their chances alive for next year’s elections. Let’s start with those.For their part, House Republicans refuse to raise taxes. That’s their non-negotiable and has been all along. Many of these folks were elected in a Tea Party wave that was all about limited government. Many of them made an explicit pledge not...

Our SCHMOTUS is right, this is a Big "F-ing" deal. With the President's signature on the Obamacare bill yesterday, your taxes went up by over $500 Billion. And if the reconciliation bill being debated in the Senate passes, taxes will go up even further. Despite the pledges of repealing the bill, and the cases filed yesterday by the stats, those brand new taxes are going to be around to hurt your pocket book and slow down the economy for a very long time. Each of those efforts to blunt the bill are long-shots at best and even if they are...

During the campaign, Obama made a definitive promise not to raise any taxes on families making less than $250,000 per year: “I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes” (September 12, 2008, Dover, NH) "No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised," Joe Biden said, "whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment...

The Dems in the house were not listening to Obama when only two days before he again assured the American people that those making less then 250,000 would not be taxed. The health bill will tax individuals for not signing up for healthcare and employers for not providing health care

Obama Tax Pledge Unrealistic Lawmakers are looking for more revenue to fund health care overhaul Wed., July 8, 2009 WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama promised to fix health care and trim the federal budget deficit, all without raising taxes on anyone but the wealthiest Americans. It's a promise he's already broken and will likely have to break again. Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress have already increased tobacco taxes — which disproportionately hit the poor — to pay for extending health coverage to 4 million children in working low-income families. Now, lawmakers are looking for more revenues to help pay for...

About the only consolation Republicans can take from the presidential race right about now is that the Democrats are even more screwed up than they are. Some consolation. But that might be the only glint of optimism for Republicans, as the mutiny by conservatives against the party's all-but-crowned presidential nominee is far wider and far deeper than many would care to admit. Let's face it, John McCain has gone out of his way to poke conservatives in the eyes for years, and conservative leaders who are now in open revolt command an awful lot of influence over millions of grassroots...

The fires are giving Arnold Schwarzenegger a golden opportunity. They're allowing him to quickly choose the kind of governor he wants to be: practical or political. Flexible or rigid. We're talking taxes. Schwarzenegger can opt to be the "never-say-never" pragmatist on taxes that he was when his gubernatorial campaign began — the candidate who declared, after a ballyhooed meeting with economic advisors: "You can't ever say never [on tax increases] because we could have next year an earthquake. We could have a natural disaster. We could have a terrorist attack or something like that." Or Schwarzenegger can stick with the...