Tax pledge ties nation in knots

The pledge not to raise taxes signed by 276 members of Congress has pushed the United States to within days of being unable to pay all its bills. That sort of uncompromising fealty to an ideal may reflect a genuine belief about what's best for the nation. But it makes governing all but impossible.

The anti-tax posture, together with what now looks like an unfortunate strategy to tie raising the debt ceiling to a deficit-reduction deal, has Congress paralyzed as the clock ticks toward Aug. 2, when the government will default on some of its obligations.

The pledge is the creation of Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit lobbying organization led by Grover Norquist. It binds the signatories -- 235 representatives and 41 senators, all but four of them Republicans -- to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business, and oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."

As a result House Republicans insist deficits must be reduced without a dime in new revenue. That absolutist stance has created the absurd situation where Republican champions of less spending, cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security and generally smaller government are spurning an agreement that would deliver Democratic votes for those things.

The framework for a deal crafted by the so-called "gang of six" that's now on the table would cut spending by $2.5 trillion to $3 trillion over the next decade. But it also calls for raising $1.2 trillion in revenue by curbing tax deductions while lowering marginal tax rates. That would settle the big picture of how much spending would be cut and how much revenue would be raised, but the details would have to be hammered out in the next few weeks. That uncertainty about specifics makes members on both sides of the aisle nervous and would set up the next round in this fight.

But absent a deal, Washington will soon face an unprecedented situation where it will have only $6 in hand for every $10 in obligations. If that moment arrives, President Barack Obama could decide to make paying the government's creditors a priority. But clearly some people or businesses expecting government checks wouldn't get them. That would be a stunning state of affairs for the world's richest nation.

Congress has flirted with similar disaster before. In 1983 President Ronald Reagan wrote Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker (R-Tenn.) asking him to help win the support of his recalcitrant colleagues for raising the debt ceiling. "The full consequences of a default -- or even the serious prospect of default -- by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate," Reagan wrote. Congress, unfettered by absolutist pledges, raised the debt ceiling.

Pledges pushed by interest groups reflect a lack of trust in elected officials. They're an attempt to hold them to their word at all costs. But the pledges are the enemy of compromise, and in this fight they risk making the United States a deadbeat nation. hN