Fred McClure on Bush's "No New Taxes" Pledge
Fred McClure discusses the political consequences of Bush's "No New Taxes" pledge.
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(Fred McClure): My firm belief, though I had absolutely nothing to do with it, is that when the President made the "no new taxes" pledge when he was running for government- I mean, running for the nomination and ultimately the presidency, because I guess he made it during the Republican convention...
My firm belief was that the "no new taxes" was very narrowly defined as, "We ain't going to increase your income taxes, you, the American people, now."
But you didn't have time to say all of that if you said, "no new taxes." Because you put yourself in a position where any tax that was different from one that had existed before- whether it's on business, whether it's on partnerships, whether it's on services, or whether it's... any of those things where the federal government has jurisdiction, you had broken your pledge.
And they stuffed it down our throats. And we played these games for the early part of it... that tried to act like they weren't something that was a violation of that pledge, and it didn't work.