Chuck Schumer took to the Senate floor to hit House GOPers for not using a 'hall pass.' Dems pounce on Norquist tax comments

Democrats wasted no time on Thursday moving to capitalize politically on Grover Norquist’s surprising comments that letting the Bush tax cuts expire wouldn’t violate his anti-tax pledge which has been signed by most Republican lawmakers.

Quickly pouncing, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) took to the Senate floor to lambaste House Republicans for seeking to block any debt ceiling deal that involves new tax revenues while urging them to seize on Norquist’s remarks and allow the Bush tax cuts to lapse.


“Grover Norquist, the hall monitor when it comes to enforcing the Republican party’s anti-tax pledge, has given House Republicans a hall pass. They should use it,” Schumer said.

“This is a coded message from one of the truest believers in the Republican Party that it’s time for conservatives to step back from the brink,” Schumer added. “Norquist has given us a potential path forward. If we decoupled the Bush tax cuts by only extending them for the middle class, and not for the millionaires and billionaires, we could have a deal that includes revenues but doesn’t violate the anti-tax pledge. Everyone wins.”

Minutes before Schumer spoke, Norquist sought to walk back his statement, from an interview published on Thursday’s Washington Post editorial page, that allowing a tax cut to expire is not a tax hike. He told MSNBC that he would “would oppose any effort to weaken, reduce or not continue the 2001, 2003 Bush tax cuts.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told reporters that all House Republicans should read Norquist’s comments in the Post.

“Now, I would like to call your attention to a Washington Post editorial I read today because I think it’s particularly important, as Republicans, who signed a pledge, a pledge to Mr. Norquist saying that they would not in any way deal with revenues,” Hoyer said. “I think Mr. Norquist has made a very, very important statement that I hope they each take into consideration.”

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said that Norquist’s no-tax pledge has has had a major impact on GOP lawmakers and so far stymied efforts to hatch an agreement to raise the debt ceiling.



“Because of Grover Norquist’s pledge, Republicans seem to be more worried about him than reducing the deficit,” Van Hollen said on MSNBC.

Schumer’s floor speech ended with a vaudevillian exchange with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) in which the two Senate Democratic leader bantered about the ills of House Republicans taking the weekend off instead of working on a debt limit deal.

Reid, who has been excoriating House GOP leadership for passing the Cut, Cap and Balance bill that is dead on arrival at the Senate, asked Schumer if he knew the House would be closed for business this weekend.

“Yes,” Schumer said. “I have read that.”

Schumer went on to join in the pile-on.

“To not be here this weekend when the nation stares the first default in our 200 and some odd year history is amazing to me that they would be gone,” he said. “Either they don’t care about defaulting on the debt, and we know that Speaker Boehner does care.”

With Seung Min Kim