Grover Norquist - President, Americans for Tax Reform Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
By fifty three. Our time here in Houston is born news.
So Senator Josh Holly introducing legislation to provide six hundred
dollars worth of tariff rebates to almost every American. They
never could go down if your joint income household income
is one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year more.
But the checks would go to all Americans and to
their dependent children, which means a family of four could

(00:22):
get up to twenty four hundred dollars. Our next, I
guess doesn't think it's a good idea. I don't think
it's a particularly great idea either. Grover Norquist is with
US President for Americans for tax reform. Why don't you
like this idea? Are there? Grover? Okay? He may want

(00:43):
to call him back because he doesn't seem to be there. Grover,
h I'm here, I'm here. Did you not off on me?
You wouldn't be the first person to fall asleep on me?

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Yeah, I'll sit here. Josh Holly's idea is not Josh
Holly idea. This is an idea that the left has
had for a long time. Elizabeth Warren talks about it
all the time. Why don't we steal money from all
the taxpayers and give it to people and so they
don't have to work. It's been tried in various places,

(01:17):
actually tested it out, and you know, if you give
people free money, they don't show up for work. And
it is first all, it's redistributing money from people who
earned it and giving it to people who don't work.
Is a very bad idea. Josh Holly is nominally a Republican,
but he's a Republican who hates right to work. He

(01:39):
got elected supporting right to work, then he was against it.
He for some reason has decided to move hard left.
He's a Senator, a Republican from Missouri. But good news
is he's the only Republican in the world who is
this left wing.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
You know, I don't look at him as left wing.
I look at this more as because, after all, isn't
it Trump himself made the suggestion. I think be ultimately
cynical about this. I think that maybe they're looking at
this is a way too all right, See, this is
how we're changing your lives. Here's money. We're sending you

(02:15):
back some of your money, so keep voting for us.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Except this is money that was taken from you because
tariffs raised the price of things you bought. So they're
not giving you money that you didn't have taken from you.
You're not pretending to.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Help people out.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
It's the ethic of welfare if you take money from
people and then you dribble it back, and it changes
all of the incentives that people have on work. But
the President said, the reason we have these tariffs is
so we can force better trade deals with other nations
which have unfortunately their own tariffs against our products, or

(03:00):
have non tariff barriers where they make it difficult to
export an American agriculture and other products. And he's had some
success evidently with Japan and with Europe. But that was
the point of the tariffs, was to threaten the tariffs
in order to get the better jobs. Now is the
time to say thank you very much and then bring

(03:20):
the terriffs down to as close to zero as you
can get, because tariffs are taxes that Americans paid. People
in France don't pay tariffs when they sell a French
product in the United States. The American consumer pays the terraff
to the United States government. This is how the United States,
back before the income tax we had tarriffs. That's how

(03:43):
the government raised its money. And tariffs were so hated
that the income tax was brought in to replace the terraff.
We forget how much people didn't like the teriff. It
was a big part of the reason for the Civil
War was the North used tariffs to loose the well.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
And if you're going to make a bunch of money
with tariffs, let's just put it towards the national debt.
God knows we have thirty six trillion dollars worth of
national debt. Let's just pay some of that down.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Huh, that would be good. Or cut taxes, other tax
rates down sure, Or take the church down and let
people have lower prices.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Okay, I think we're I think we're generally in agreement.
Thank you, sir, appreciate it. G Reverend Arquist, the president
of Americans for Tax Reform. It's five fifty seven.