Interview With Roger Hickey, Grover Norquist
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.</s>ROGER HICKEY, CO-DIRECTOR, CAMPAIGN FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE: Good to be with you.</s>GROVER NORQUIST, PRES., AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM: Thank you.</s>ROBERTS: Grover Norquist, what do you think, is there ever a bad time to cut taxes.</s>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.</s>ROBERTS: And what about the surplus? What happen to that?</s>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.</s>ROBERTS: Roger Hickey, what do you think? Is the timing right? Is it fair?</s>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.</s>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.</s>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.</s>HICKEY: And they have somehow found a way to ignore the people who really need the tax cut.</s>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.</s>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.</s>NORQUIST: The problem...</s>HICKEY: That's not solving the problem, and it hasn't passed as a result.</s>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.</s>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.</s>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.</s>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?</s>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.</s>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.</s>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.</s>HICKEY: Good to be with you.</s>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