WASHINGTON — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Bills has signed anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist’s no-new-taxes pledge, so when he said at a Humphrey Institute forum on Monday that he’d be willing to raise tax revenue to reduce the deficit, it naturally made headlines.
But Bills said Tuesday that’s been his plan all along.
After a debate with his opponent, Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, that focused heavily on deficit reduction, Bills released a statement clarifying his position: “I am laser focused on eliminating the deficit, and think we need to reform the tax code to get there. We need to eliminate tax loopholes and subsidies, and quit using our tax code to pick winners and losers. Some people will call that a tax increase; I just call it common sense.”
Bills cited two Republican deficit reduction plans that fit such a category, the “Back to Black” plan pushed by U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, which would close tax loopholes and include nearly $1 trillion in new revenue, and the Sen. Rand Paul budget plan that includes a 17 percent flat tax. Both plans contain a host of spending cuts.
Klobuchar supports what Democrats call a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, blending spending cut with new revenue to find $4 trillion worth of savings over the next 10 years. The 2011 Budget Control Act accounts for $2.2 trillion of that; she supports President Obama’s plan to allow the Bush-era tax cuts on income over $250,000 to expire (bringing in $750 billion in new revenue), and ending tax subsidies to oil companies that would save an additional $40 billion, she said during the debate Tuesday.
The Norquist tax pledge has two parts: a promise to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal tax rate on individuals and businesses” as well as “oppose any net reductions or eliminations of deductions and credits” unless there are corresponding tax rate decreases elsewhere in the tax code.
His group, Americans for Tax Reform, came out against the Coburn plan when Coburn introduced it last year. And since a flat tax like that in Paul's budget would in effect lower rates for those currently in a higher tax bracket and raise them for those in a lower one, Bills’ campaign said that would also be a breach of the tax pledge he signed.
In his Tuesday statement, Bills said he’s been supporting those plans throughout his campaign, despite signing the ATR pledge. At the Humphrey Institute on Monday, he acknowledged that he would run afoul of Norquist if elected.
"I don't care if I have to have a verbal or physical confrontation with Grover Norquist," he said, per the Pioneer Press. "I'm going to vote for the compromise because that's what my students in my high school classes -- and (they are) the reason why I'm running -- would want me to do."
Devin Henry can be reached at dhenry@minnpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dhenry