Saxby Chambliss: One more Republican breaks ranks over anti-tax pledge

Republicans are grappling with growing rifts in their ranks over a pledge to never raise taxes that has been rock solid for more than 20 years. That shift could determine how Congress deals with its looming 'fiscal cliff.'

By Gail Russell Chaddock,?Staff writer / November 24, 2012

President Obama, accompanied by House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio, speaks to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House as he hosted a meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss the deficit and economy in Washington at a Nov. 16 meeting.

Carolyn Kaster/AP/File

Enlarge

The sharpest struggle in the lame-duck session of Congress, which picks up again on Monday, may well be within GOP ranks, as Republicans grapple with whether to relax a no-new-tax pledge that has been fixed party orthodoxy for nearly a generation.

Skip to next paragraph

' + google_ads[0].line2 + '
' + google_ads[0].line3 + '

'; } else if (google_ads.length > 1) { ad_unit += ''; } } document.getElementById("ad_unit").innerHTML += ad_unit; google_adnum += google_ads.length; return; } var google_adnum = 0; google_ad_client = "pub-6743622525202572"; google_ad_output = 'js'; google_max_num_ads = '1'; google_feedback = "on"; google_ad_type = "text"; google_adtest = "on"; google_image_size = '230x105'; google_skip = '0'; // -->

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of
The Christian Science Monitor
Weekly Digital Edition

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) of Georgia is the latest lawmaker to formally renege on the pledge. In a television interview on Wednesday, he said that he's no longer supporting the pledge because "times have changed significantly, and I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge."

Such breaks in GOP ranks could become decisive as GOP leaders negotiate with Democrats and the White House over how to resolve the "fiscal cliff," or some $600 billion in mandatory spending cuts and tax increases set to take effect in 2013.

Breaking a no-new-tax pledge can be toxic at the polls. President George H. W. Bush lost his bid for a second term after bypassing his 1988 "Read my lips: no new taxes" pledge in his budget agreement with a Democrat-controlled Congress in 1990. Since then, most GOP members of Congress and even a few Democrats have signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge by Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group.

After Senator Chambliss's announcement, ATR President Grover Norquist shot back in a statement on Friday: "Raising taxes on the people of Georgia to pay for Obama's reckless spending is not the right thing to do for America or Georgia."

"We have a problem because Washington spends too much, not because Sen. Chambliss has failed so far to raise taxes on the hard-working men and women of Georgia," he added.

Sen. Ben Nelson (D) of Nebraska broke his no-new-tax pledge and soon after announced his retirement from the Senate in 2012. "[Senator Nelson] withdrew because polling showed he could not win a general election having both lied to his state and raised their taxes," Mr. Norquist said in Friday's statement.

Heading into the 2012 elections, 279 incumbent lawmakers in Congress had signed the pledge, up from 208 in 2010, according to the ATR website.? In addition, 286 challengers had taken the pledge, up from 241 in 2010. (The ATR site does not expunge the names of those who have since repudiated the pledge.)

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/jBc2yscYWu4/Saxby-Chambliss-One-more-Republican-breaks-ranks-over-anti-tax-pledge

katy perry divorce brock lesnar retires new years wake forest wake forest old dominion insync