WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss this week became the latest Republican lawmaker to loosen his ties to Grover Norquist, the anti-tax lobbyist famous for getting elected officials to sign a “taxpayer protection pledge.”
The rebellion, albeit a modest one, comes as Republicans prepare to negotiate with Demo-crats and President Barack Obama on a deal to avert the so-called fiscal cliff – some $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts set to start jolting the economy at the beginning of 2013.
“I care more about this country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge,” Chambliss told Georgia television station WMAZ on Thursday. “If we do it his way, then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.”
A vast majority of elected Republicans have signed the pledge Norquist created in 1986, which commits them to voting against tax increases, and it became a type of litmus test among U.S. conservatives.
But its influence, and that of Norquist’s organization, Americans for Tax Reform, may be waning following Republican losses in this month’s elections and acknowledgments from Republican leaders that revenue must be raised to pare deficits topping $1 trillion.
“Grover Norquist has no plan to pay this debt down. His plan says you continue to add to the debt. I just have a fundamental disagreement with him about that,” Chambliss said.
Norquist, in response, noted that Chambliss was an author of an open letter to him last year from three Republicans promising support for revenue generation from the “pro-growth effects” of lower tax rates.
“Senator Chambliss promised the people of Georgia he would go to Washington and reform government rather than raise taxes to pay for bigger government,” Norquist said.
Some Republicans contend they are only open to raising revenue through economic growth, an impact hard to quantify and which Democrats and many economists say is not nearly enough.
Republican aides on Capitol Hill have been grumbling privately about the attention Norquist gets, worrying that it weakens their ability to negotiate across the aisle.
