Tune to Leave Us Alone with ATR President Grover Norquist on Apple Podcasts and Spotify!
Big things are happening in Washington, and this week’s episode of Leave Us Alone is here to break it all down. Host Grover Norquist is joined by ATR’s Mike Palicz and James Erwin to discuss the latest on the expiring Trump Tax Cuts. The U.S. House has taken the first step. Now, attention turns to the U.S. Senate, where action is expected soon to protect taxpayers from an automatic tax hike. This episode covers it all, focusing on offsets like selling government assets, cutting spending, and exposing bureaucratic waste.
But that’s not all—our guests also dive into the latest government overreach, including disastrous price control proposals pushed by Bernie Sanders and company. From capping credit card interest rates to the history of failed price controls (dating back to Hammurabi), the team explains why these ideas always backfire on consumers. Plus, ever heard of Calvinball? You’ll love this deep dive into how politicians constantly change the rules to fit their agenda.
Don’t miss this episode, which is packed with policy insights and free-market solutions. Subscribe to Leave Us Alone on your favorite podcast platform, and be sure to leave a review to help us reach even more conservative listeners!
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Transcript:
Grover Norquist: [00:00:00] Welcome to Leave Us Alone, the podcast, the Champions, individual Freedom and Limited Government. I’m your host, Grover Norquist, and today we’re diving into taxes and spending legislation and stupid government regulations and selling off stuff as a way to. Reduce the deficit and for those turning in for the first time, leave us alone is dedicated to the principle that government should stay out of our lives.
Our coalition is made up of the diverse groups, each of for their own reasons, want the government to leave them alone, whether leave, don’t raise my taxes, leave my guns alone, let me homeschool or other personal issues. People who wish to be free. In today’s episode, we’re honored to have with us, Mike and James, and they both work at Americans for Tax Reform trying to get regulations and taxes down.
So guys, let’s get ready for a powerful discussion on the issues that matter most to those who are [00:01:00] listening. And let’s get us started. Mike, what is happening with taxes? Well,
Mike Palicz: we’ve had a lot happen in the tax world since last we talked the key, which Federal? Federal, right at the federal level. We have had the first crucial step passed outta the house about making the Trump tax cuts permanent and doing the next round of tax reform including some of the ideas that President Trump campaigned on tax.
So what happened was we had about mid-February we had the house pass their first step in the reconciliation project which is essentially giving out the budget instructions to the members and sending that bill to the house but to, sorry, to the Senate, so the Senate, we’re now waiting on action. Hopefully happening soon here, but we’re starting to get a rough landscape of kind of what it will, what will be required to happen to make the Trump tax cuts extended or made permanent.
The part of this that’s difficult for Republicans is the instructions to ways and means came in saying that on a current law baseline, they can only add [00:02:00] 4.5 trillion to the deficit. Meaning that. We need to have offsets elsewhere under this current instruction. In order to do the additional Trump tax cuts and to make the Trump tax cuts permanent ways, a means, chairman Jason Smith had pushed for a higher number around 5.5 trillion.
And then the immediate aftermath of this, we had a group of senators, including Senate Finance Chairman Mike Repo and Leader Thune make it very clear in a letter to President Trump that they would not support any bill. That makes, that doesn’t make the Trump tax cuts permanent and would push for a higher number and will continue to use a current policy baseline as their push in the Senate.
Grover, could you tell us a little bit more about the baseline question and what that means?
Grover Norquist: Well, it’s all important. If you use current law, most of the Trump tax cut disappears at the end of this next year. And to make it permanent or to extend it at all. You need to quote unquote pay for this [00:03:00] tax cut that we already have.
So there’s going to be a huge tax increase next year if we don’t make this permanent out. To do that requires either you say we’re gonna go based on present policy, which is some, but 10% of the Trump tax cut has begun to evaporate over time, and we would need to do something to offset that. In their view to make it permanent.
But if you work off of current policy, you’d say, well, 90% of it’s all there. Just make it permanent and it doesn’t cost anything. ’cause that’s where we are right now. In point of fact, if we do nothing, there’s a huge tax increase. If we pass this, basically nothing happens. The tax cut continues. The one people are used to the one we live with.
The taxes you now pay will continue. Those people who think that we should. You know, every five years or 10 years, we constitute the entire tax code and the Democrats and [00:04:00] some Republicans go, oh, but we have to raise taxes to counteract all the tax cuts. Well then you never get pro-growth policy. So very big.
The Senate is right, the house is wrong. Matter of fact, house leadership and most House guys are quite good on this. There’s a handful of people who, for their own reasons that make no sense to me, wanted to use. The current law, which makes it difficult to maintain the Trump tax cuts, they would kill the Trump tax cuts after five or 10 years under their rule.
So we hope and look for a Senate stepping in the adults and saying, guys, let’s make this permanent. And really all we’re doing is extending an existing tax cut. There’s nothing stimulative about this for the economy. The economy needs more growth and more opportunity. The one piece of this that would be really good for growth is if we make the tax cut, that one we have now permanent, that would make everybody feel better about investing in the future.
And
Mike Palicz: I think what’s so important about the [00:05:00] current policy baseline is one, it reflects reality, right? It’s good. Good luck to any member of Congress who wants to go home and tell their members that if the Trump task cuts expired. Oh, that according to the Congressional Budget Office, under current law their taxes aren’t actually going up.
It was the plan all along. So when Republicans passed the tax cuts in 2017, the plan was always to extend them, to make them permanent. I think the baseline reflects that reality and then really important on policy grounds, people can get lost in procedural steps. The important thing here is that we have a bill that cuts taxes and cut spending.
We’re set to do that, and I think the most important thing is. In the long run, we avoid future spending by making sure we make this permanent and you avoid the cliff of a future deal in which if Democrats have the House, the Senate, or the White House or anything like that. They would be able to demand spending increases to extend the Trump tax cuts.
Grover Norquist: George w Bush’s tax cuts also started to disappear at year five and [00:06:00] then completely disappeared after at year 10. Things like the death tax and repeal and so on. And when you go to extend them, if the Democrats have the presidency or the House or the Senate, they can say no. To extending any or all of them massive tax increase just by sitting on their hands.
They don’t have to, we didn’t pass a tax increase. This is George Bush’s law or Trump’s law. The fact that it disappeared at the end of the day or yeah, we could extend your tax cuts, which isn’t doing you a favor if you’re a tax taxpayer ’cause you’re just keeping what you have in return for huge quantities of spending to hire more democratic precinct workers to beat you in the next election.
And. We have that crisis every five or 10 years, making the Trump tax cuts permanent ends, that pressure point that the Democrats have where they can either steal the tax, increase tax cuts away from people in whole or in part and or force spending hikes as part of a deal.
Mike Palicz: And of course we have the great political argument here [00:07:00] of Democrats tend to play Calvin Ball with this, where when we did extend the Bush tax cuts when Obama was president.
The Obama administration very aggressively made the case for using a current policy baseline. Now that Republicans are in power, they’re of course against that, even though they were for it in the past. And then we have the hypocrisy of the way we score spending versus taxes. Roughly 30% of all federal spending right now is continued under a current policy.
Baseline taxes are not if we just allowed. Current law to take effect and we didn’t renew those spending programs. You’re talking about $27 trillion over the next 10 years that the Congressional Budget office just assumes continues. So I think this real hypocrisy of, you know, the idea that it’s stacked against conservatives, that the way we score tax cuts should be scored the way we have done spending, they should be treated equally, and that means the obvious real world situation, accounting for taxes will go up next year if Congress doesn’t act here.
Grover Norquist: And for [00:08:00] people not familiar with the history of the Protestant church Calvin Ball is what,
Mike Palicz: Calvin Ball is not from the history of the Reformation or anything like that, that Calvin and Hobbes cartoon.
Jame Erwin: Yeah. Far more profound philosophical text. There you go. Right.
Grover Norquist: Well, Calvin, the character is named after Calvin, the theologian.
Yes. But what is Calvin Ball then?
Mike Palicz: Calvin Ball is the game that Calvin from Calvin Hobbes plays in which he just makes up the rules as he goes along. Okay? The
Jame Erwin: only rule is the rules can ever be the same in two. Any two times you play. Correct. So the base, the bases are constantly reversing. They have to wear like different masks.
There are dances you have to do for your points to be legitimate. But the point is, yes, you’re constantly changing the rules. Although I should say to be fair to Democrats on current policy baseline, they were for it before they were against it,
Grover Norquist: right? So we can help them before it again. Yeah, of course.
We don’t let them vote on this.
Jame Erwin: Yeah, exactly. Okay. But speaking of Democrat precinct workers, it’s been a bad couple months to be one. Wouldn’t you say with all the, all of the doge cuts to their [00:09:00] favored constituencies that have been politically active in the past?
Grover Norquist: Well, yes, and given that 99% of the union dues.
That goes political if from the IRS alone goes to Democrats and Democrat and left of center items. So this is a huge cash flow through the unions, through the workforce to the left wing of the party, nevermind the contracts that they give out to their friends and the grants that they give out to their friends.
And the several billions of dollars that goes to failed candidates for governor.
Mike Palicz: And very exciting. We have new polling from over the weekend. Showing that a majority of Americans think Doge and Elon’s work should continue. While at the same time we have the lowest approval rating of Democrats I believe in the history since they’ve started taking that question in the poll.
Jame Erwin: Yes. This, in the history of the CNN poll
Mike Palicz: and the history of the CNN poll, Democrats had this lower point. So Democrats are in disarray. While the work of the Trump administration and Doge is supported by the public, and I think obviously an area that we would [00:10:00] continue. To encourage them to look at, would be at the IRS as Grover just mentioning, just ridiculous things.
These people are doing these IRS agents on the taxpayer dime. Currently we’ve put out blog posts about how they’re allowed to do their union organization time during work hours all of which while we have them not even showing up to the workplace,
Grover Norquist: oh, they’re government workers that are full-time, paid as if they were working for taxpayers, and all they do is union work.
Jame Erwin: Yeah, there are, they’re individuals who spend all of their time in the last few years doing union work, even though they’re paid as if they’re, and
Grover Norquist: I was told by folks who are looking into this back during the previous Trump administration, that one of the first things they negotiate is the best office space.
They have the corner rooms
Jame Erwin: that they’re never right.
Grover Norquist: Yes, that too.
Mike Palicz: And you’ve seen this legal defense coming from the government union saying, well, we’ve struck in a deal, therefore you can’t fire us. This ridiculous argument that. You know, essentially they’re held unaccountable to the rest of the executive branch, that they can’t be fired by the [00:11:00] president.
I just think you see them pulling out every argument they can anything but go back to work.
Grover Norquist: Well, one thing to keep in mind is that the 1978 law that Jimmy Carter promised to pass, which is why he got. Support from the unions. The 1978 law says that the president can end and ban unionization in any department.
That’s key and important to national security. That’s apparently what they did to TSA, the Transportation Safety Administration or Service Administration Safety. TSA they said you can’t have a union in TSA used to do the same thing for the Pentagon. You should do the same thing for Veterans Affairs And for the IRS?
No, IRS no military.
Jame Erwin: And while you’re thinking about how to organize your government union, a quick reminder before we continue, if you’re enjoying the discussion today, please take a moment to rate and review. Leave us alone on your favorite podcast platform. Your support helps us reach more listeners who care about these important issues.
And don’t forget to share this episode with your friends and family. Now, back to the conversation.
Mike Palicz: So, James, around the tax and reconciliation conversation one of the committees I think that [00:12:00] has the hardest task in front of them. This is the Energy and Commerce Committee tasked with cutting nearly $900 billion in spending.
Can you give us some suggestions of where they might look for revenue to, to help further along the Trump tax cuts?
Jame Erwin: Yeah, absolutely. So the, this, all of this, because of the reconciliation rules, you need to balance out how much spending you’re cutting and how much revenue is supposedly lost based on CBOs projections.
We’ll get more to CBO in just a second. One of the things you can do is generate revenue to balance out the changes in tax law through liquidating government assets. So we think a lot about land that can be sold. We think about leasing rights for minerals mineral extraction, for oil leases natural gas.
There’s many, many ways that the government can generate revenue in it, sort of on a onetime basis or even a continuing basis for 10 years. Can
Grover Norquist: you sell the those student loans?
Jame Erwin: I actually, I think you can. I would
Grover Norquist: have to look into that because that’s like a trillion dollars out there. I don’t know if it’s worth a trillion dollars, but it’s worth something.
Jame Erwin: Yeah, you could privatize those assets because they are [00:13:00] technically SBA,
Grover Norquist: Small business administration has a bunch of loans.
Jame Erwin: Yes, that’s also true. So yeah, there are ways you can refinance many government funding vehicles that are, structured as loans. I didn’t think of that.
Can we sell Fanny and Freddie? We can sell Fanny and Freddie. So the question with that is exactly how much revenue it would generate. There are a couple different ways you can do it. You can, the one is called recap and release, where you recapitalize and then sort of stand them up as private companies again.
The better version I would think would be to scrap it for parts. So basically you take all the assets, they have all their outstanding liabilities. They’ve been through bankruptcy multiple times. They’ve been under governor government conservatorship since the bailout back in 2009. If you sold them off as companies, you would not only generate revenue from the immediate sale, but then they would be subject to taxation.
So that, as sort of in a 10 year window does, I mean, provided their in a position to pay over tax. Can
Grover Norquist: Kentucky Congressman Andy Barr told me that’s several hundred billion dollars
Jame Erwin: at the high end. Yes, we are, we have yet to come with I don’t know how CBO would score it. So CBO has all [00:14:00] kinds of.
Chicanery around what what they expect things to generate in the future as we’ve been talking about with taxes. So I’m not sure that they would necessarily agree with the truth when it comes to how much money that would generate. But that’s something, that’s definitely an option that should be on the table.
Another one that CPOs also rather, skulls about, shall we say, is the spectrum auction. So spectrum is the radio frequency spectrum are the radio waves that carry all wireless communications. You’re probably listening to this podcast right now through wireless communications, either wifi through cellular coverage old fashioned radio broadcast television, satellite, anything that’s not cable with a hard line wire, connecting it GPS.
All of these things rely on sending vibrations. Through radio waves to devices and that’s, that is the basis of all of the connectivity of the wireless world we live in today. All modern technology and information is exchanged, or most of it, through these wireless communications at some point in the chain.
In order [00:15:00] to use these frequencies, however, the government grants licenses for exclusive use so that the radio waves don’t bleed into each other. And this is going back to the 1920s when radio was first a thing. Radio stations did not have exclusive licenses to the frequency they broadcasted on. So sometimes they would interfere with each other.
So that’s the reason the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission even exists in the first place, is that it was originally the radio commission whose job it was to grant licenses to keep people in exclusive zones. That at least within geographic areas where they could interfere with each other?
Well, a lot of the prime mid band spectrum that we need for wireless communications has since been auctioned off to wireless carriers for their exclusive use so they can build out their cell phone networks. Some of its unlicensed and is used for wifi and ham radio operations. You know, just sort of general purpose, but since we switched to the auction model and this has been 1994, so prior to 1994, this stuff was just given away by committees of bureaucrats.
It was called the beauty contest system. You would go in [00:16:00] and bureaucrats would say whether they thought it was a good idea for you to use the spectrum the way you wanted to. Another word for this would be central planning. Since 1994, we switched to the auction system where there’s actually a competitive bidding process subject to market incentives to sell off exclusive rights, to use different frequencies of spectrum in different ranges.
I. And since 1994, that has generated over $230 billion in revenue for the treasury, which is, in the lifetime of the Spectrum auctions I mean, may seem like at any given point, you’re not generating very much revenue. The reason it would be different if spectrum auction were included in this reconciliation bill is that they have not been authorized for the last.
Three years. So for three years there has been, this is the first time that spectrum auctions have expired and not been reauthorized for any stretch of time since they began in 1994. For three years, there have been no competitive bidding for spectrum licenses. That means that all of the demand for is pent up from these [00:17:00] carriers who are desperate to develop 5G and now six G networks that require a lot more spectrum for them to be able to do the data transfers necessary to facilitate communications.
They frankly are in a position now where they’d be willing to mortgage off most of their assets just to get ahold of these licenses, to raise however much money they need to pay to the government to be able to effectively build out next generation communications networks.
Grover Norquist: And you don’t need authorization if you do it in reconciliation.
Jame Erwin: So in reconciliation. Well, I think there’s bipartisan appetites for authorization anyway. The question is does it qualify? In the eyes of the Senate, parliamentarian as a re fundamentally a revenue raiser or not. And the answer is clearly yes. I mean, I don’t think spectrum auctions have been passed through reconciliation in the past.
I believe I’ll, I will verify that. But it would seem pretty ridiculous to have Yeah. To hold
Mike Palicz: an auction and then argue that the auction isn’t intended to raise revenue. Exactly.
Jame Erwin: Right. So I mean, I think that as in terms of policy versus. A fiscal baseline. I think this absolutely is something that can be used as a res [00:18:00] revenue raiser to balance out some of the tax reform, but it also is just, it’s a good idea on its own anyway, because this encourages more investment in wireless communications that helps facilitate more artificial intelligence, that helps facilitate more wireless communications.
I wanted to mention CBO quickly because the problem you come up against with this is that even though there is incredible demand right now that has been unserved for three whole years from the wireless carriers. And it’s, I mean, a hundred billion dollars is probably not unreasonable to expect from something like this.
If it’s authorized this year, CBO always discounts its projections for revenue auctions by 50% on the idea that perhaps the auction won’t happen, which is to say if you pass a law that says this auction is going to happen, CBO says, well, it’s a 50% chance, it might not. Therefore, we’re going to reduce our projected revenue by half.
Grover Norquist: Is there any punishment if they get it wrong again? No. Okay. The East Germans got together with Bernie Sanders and they came up with a stupid idea [00:19:00] Republican likes. What’s that?
Jame Erwin: Yeah. So this is the Credit Card Competition Act. This is something that has been proposed. I’m sorry, this is, you’re talking about interest rates, aren’t you?
Yeah. Interest. They’re two
Grover Norquist: stupid ideas. Yes.
Jame Erwin: There’s multiple stupid ideas. It’s hard to keep track of them sometimes. One’s the East
Grover Norquist: Germans, one’s Bulgarians.
Jame Erwin: All right. We’ll start with the East Germans. The East Germans are fans of capping interest rates for credit cards. So interest rates are basically the price you pay to access credit on a credit card.
It’s pretty straightforward. You know, the banks don’t give out money for free. They demand interest if you don’t pay on time. If you do pay your card on time consistently, you don’t usually get charged very much interest, if any. If you don’t, you fall behind. There’s a surcharge for the loan they’re giving you.
They’re effectively giving you an incredibly short term loan. And this is great for our economy. It enables consumer spending. It enables a lot of quick liquidity for consumption. This props up a lot of our small businesses. This is underlies very much of the economic transaction and activity in the United States.
However, nobody likes to fall behind on their credit cards. So some demagogues are moving to cap. The interest rates that banks are able to charge on the short term loans they’re giving out. [00:20:00] Bernie Sanders is leading them as usual. There’s Republican buy-in, unfortunately. So the bill that was recently introduced is led by Bernie Sanders, joined by Josh Hawley, our friend from Missouri, and there’s a house version as well that has Anna Paulina Luna from Florida on it.
So this is unfortunately an idea that’s getting bipartisan, but she’s introduced
Mike Palicz: with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I believe. Is that correct? Yes, yes,
Jame Erwin: that’s correct. Sorry. So, yeah, so our two, our two favorite avowed socialists in Congress, Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are getting Republican buy-in on this idea that you should impose a price control.
On credit on short term loans. Well, as we all know, CRI price controls create shortages because if you can’t charge a market rate for something, you run out of it. And if you’re unable to apply a surcharge to somebody who does not pay back money, they’ve borrowed from you, what are you going to do?
Mike Palicz: And I think it’s a pretty straightforward argument that we shouldn’t have government.
Interfering in the marketplace to make it more difficult for people to get credit cards. Well, exactly, and that would be the practical outcome.
Grover Norquist: It worked in the Middle Ages.
Jame Erwin: Exactly.
Grover Norquist: Yeah. [00:21:00] Andry laws that slowed everything down for several hundred years
Jame Erwin: and the entire basis of the modern world. Not to get too historical, although Mike and I like to do that a lot around the office, but the entire basis of the modern world has been modern banking that began in Renaissance Italy with this idea that actually you could charge interest on a loan and turn a profit on it.
Not only does that create a large financial institution that’s capable of capitalizing all kinds of enterprises, business enterprises, it also makes credit more available to more people. Because if you can charge people interest for not paying back their loans, you are able to lend to more people. If people don’t pay you back and you have no way of recovering your money, you’re just not going to lend your money to them in the first place.
So this supposedly compassionate effort to limit the amount of interest. That credit cards and banks can charge on their short term loans is really just going to restrict capital and keep it out of the hands of your average consumer, out of your working class voter, and concentrated more in the hands of the people who have [00:22:00] more money available in the first place.
Mike Palicz: And this is another step in the failed price controls that we saw throughout the Biden administration that did not curb inflation. That Biden campaigned on. It’s something that should be outright rejected by conservatives, is disappointing to see some of these members buying into the Bernie Sanders and a OC Wing of the Democrat Party.
You know, essentially as a political demagoguing to trying, you know, to show that they’re doing something on rising prices. If we wanna be doing something, rising prices, the number one thing we should be focused on getting the government out of our way, doing Trump’s deregulation. Passing Trump’s tax cuts and allowing people to have more money in their pocket.
Jame Erwin: And to just bring a little more history into this, Mike what’s the oldest record we have of price controls again? I mean,
Mike Palicz: we’ve had price controls failing since 2300 BC and you can correct me. Is it Nebuchadnezzar’s code that had price controls? They’ve been
Jame Erwin: hammurabi’s code actually even older, but yeah.
Mike Palicz: But this is something that, yeah, the, and what we’ve seen in some populous politics, it’s always to come forward with, well, we can just have the government step in and you’re concerned about high [00:23:00] prices. We’ll just cap high prices. That leads to having quality issues, to having shortages of goods in, I think in this instance, what you’re practically talking about is going to be far more difficult for someone to get approved for a credit card in the first place.
Jame Erwin: Mm-hmm. It arguably was what hasten the collapse of the Roman Empire because when they tried to publish a table that told you what you could charge for every single specific good or service imaginable. It was, it never adjusted to reflect market realities. People stopped using coinage and reverted to a barter economy, and that’s what gave rise to the Dark Ages.
Mike Palicz: So we can, we’ll do a fact check on whether it was Ham, robbi, or Nebuchadnezzar. But Grovers, anything, any closing word on kind of some of the price controls we’ve seen on things ranging from credit cards, interest rates? Well,
Grover Norquist: it was stupid when Nixon did it too. I mean, that’s more recent and his name’s easier to pronounce.
And I would like to announce that this wraps things up today for today’s episode of Leave Us Alone. Thank you for joining us. We hope you’ve found the [00:24:00] discussion as enlighten, as enlightening as I did, and now know what Calvin Ball is. And if you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, please take a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform.
Your feedback helps us reach more listeners who care about these important issues. And don’t forget to share this episode with your friends, family, and anyone else who values. Their liberty, not the East Germans. So stay tuned for our next episode where we’ll continue to bring you thought provoking conversations and insights.
Until then. And even after that, I’m Grover Norquist. Thank you.
