Committing what some conservatives would consider fiscal heresy, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Bills says he would vote for a tax increase if it were part of a “grand compromise” to close the nation’s gaping budget deficit.

Bills, the Rosemount High School economics teacher and state legislator who is challenging Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., has called for deep cuts in federal spending to balance the budget.

But during an appearance Monday, Sept., 17, at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, he said he knows Congress would not reduce spending as sharply as he proposes and that he would be willing to vote for a compromise that combined budget cuts with tax increases.

That puts him at odds with congressional Republicans who last year scuttled a debt-reduction deal with President Barack Obama because it would have included tax increases on the nation’s wealthiest households.

During a question-and-answer session, Larry Jacobs, director of the university’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance, asked Bills if he supports a 2010 federal deficit-reduction report that called for shrinking the national debt by $4 trillion over a decade with a mix including $1 in tax increases for every $2 in spending cuts.

“I will vote for the compromise, no matter what it is,” Bills replied.

“I don’t care if I have to have a verbal or physical confrontation with Grover Norquist,” he said, referring to the conservative who has persuaded almost all congressional Republicans to sign a pledge to oppose all tax increases. “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.”

Bills apparently would have to break a promise to Norquist to vote for a tax hike. Norquist is the founder of Americans for Tax Reform, and according to the organization’s website, Bills has signed his no-new-taxes pledge.

Bills has made deficit reduction his signature issue, saying the mounting national debt poses a potentially catastrophic threat to the nation’s economy.

After the session, Jacobs said he couldn’t recall a single Minnesota Republican running for federal office during the past 20 years agreeing to raise taxes under any circumstances.

“The fact that Representative Bills is coming forward and saying he would support a compromise, even if it included a tax increase, is stunning,” Jacobs said.

Bills has endorsed one of the most radical deficit-reduction plans offered in Congress, a proposal by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would balance the budget and pay down $2 trillion in debt over 10 years.

Among other cuts, Jacobs said, Paul’s plan would reduce the average Social Security benefit by 40 percent and eliminate the current Medicare program within a few years. The Senate rejected Paul’s proposal on an 83-16 vote.

Any deficit-reduction plan “won’t end up there,” Bills said of Paul’s proposal. But he said he thinks it’s a good place to start a debate over how to avert a financial disaster.

“Let’s start having a discussion,” he said.

Klobuchar has supported Obama’s proposal to let the Bush-era tax cuts for the nation’s wealthiest families expire next year as part of a deficit-reduction strategy that would put significant cuts in entitlement programs on the table.

The deficit-reduction compromise Bills said he would support was proposed in 2010 by a federal commission headed by former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton. Simpson-Bowles, as it is known, would reduce budget deficits to 2.2 percent of gross domestic product over a decade.

Klobuchar championed creation of the Simpson-Bowles commission and has said its recommendations were a “good starting point” for reducing the deficit.

Bills and Klobuchar are scheduled to take part in their third debate Tuesday morning in Duluth.

Bill Salisbury can be reached at 651-228-5538. Follow him at twitter.com/bsalisbury.