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<html> <head> <title>Grover Norquist</title> <meta name="googlebot" content="noodp"> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/silly-nndb-icon.png" /><style type="text/css">  </style></head> <body bgcolor=#ffffff> <center> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td valign=top><table width=550 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><table width="100%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" background="/nndb.gif"> <tr> <td rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><a href="http://www.nndb.com/"><img src="/title.gif" width="260" height="50" border=0 alt="NNDB"></a></td> <td><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr align="center"> <td width="25%" nowrap>This is a beta version of NNDB</td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" valign="middle"> <form action="http://search.nndb.com/search/nndb.cgi" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="nndb" value="1"></input> Search: <select name="omenu"> <option value="unspecified" selected>All Names</option> <option value="living">Living people</option> <option value="dead">Dead people</option> <option value="bands">Band Names</option> <option value="books">Book Titles</option> <option value="movies">Movie Titles</option> <option value="fulltext">Full Text</option> </select> for <input name="query" value="" size=24 maxlength=96> <input type=submit value="Search"> </form></td> </tr> </table>        </td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=red height=2></td></tr><map name=fool><area coords="102,0,240,14" href="/people/482/000049335/bibliography/" alt="bibliography"></map><tr bgcolor=F0F0F0><td bgcolor=F0F0F0 style="padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;"><img src="/red-profile-2.gif" align="right" height=15 width=240 border=0 usemap=#fool> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=F0F0F0>Grover Norquist<img src="gover_norquist.jpg" height=235 width=188 align=right hspace=10 vspace=10 alt="Grover Norquist">AKA Grover Glenn NorquistBorn: <a href="/lists/810/000106492/" class=proflink>19-Oct</a>-<a href="/lists/955/000105640/" class=proflink>1956</a> Birthplace: <a href="/geo/122/000079882/" class=proflink>Sharon, PA</a> Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: <a href="/lists/199/000068992/" class=proflink>Activist</a>, <a href="/lists/182/000068975/" class=proflink>Columnist</a> Party Affiliation: RepublicanNationality: United States Executive summary: Washington lobbyist, anti-tax crusaderFormer Republican golden boy Grover Norquist is the genius who coerced <a href="/people/362/000022296/">George H.W. Bush</a> into making the disastrous "Read My Lips: No New Taxes" pledge back in 1988. Relentlessly committed to slashing the size of government in half within 25 years, Norquist until recently wielded substantial influence over GOP fiscal policy. Close friends <a href="/people/487/000024415/">Newt Gingrich</a> and <a href="/people/353/000022287/">Karl Rove</a> relied heavily on him for ideas to reduce the federal budget. (Not bad for a guy who's never held elected office.) But that all changed after September 11th. The son of a city tax assessor, young Grover read the classic work Masters of Deceit by <a href="/people/456/000024384/">J. Edgar Hoover</a> at age eleven, which instilled a lifelong hatred of Communism. Somehow or other, along the way he also managed to become a major <a href="/people/212/000022146/">Janis Joplin</a> fan, calling her oeuvre "the high point of Western civilization." He keeps a poster of her in his office, along with a bunch of <a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/culture/south-park/">South Park</a> crap. Over the years, Norquist became increasingly conservative, and eventually decided that the most troubling problem facing America is the gargantuan size of its government. Quite rightly, he decided the most effective way to reduce the size of government would be to cut off its sources of revenue (aka taxes). And he resolved to launch a permanent tax revolt. So in 1986 Norquist founded the organization Americans for Tax Reform, which is categorically opposed to any increase in taxation and lobbies Congress hard for an endless series of tax cuts -- at least one per year. Of course, cutting the size of the government in half is going to take some belt-tightening. According to New York Times columnist <a href="/people/217/000024145/">Paul Krugman</a>: <blockquote><tt> In Norquist's vision, America a couple of decades from now will be a place in which elderly people make up a disproportionate share of the poor, as they did before Social Security. It will also be a country in which even middle-class elderly Americans are, in many cases, unable to afford expensive medical procedures or prescription drugs and in which poor Americans generally go without even basic health care. And it may well be a place in which only those who can afford expensive private schools can give their children a decent education. </tt></blockquote> Nevertheless, Grover brings a messianic zeal to the cause. During an interview on the National Public Radio show Fresh Air, Norquist claimed that the estate tax is just as immoral as genocide, because both target only a minority of the population: <blockquote> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=10> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>NORQUIST</tt>:</td> <td>That's the morality of the Holocaust. "Well, it's only a small percentage," you know. "I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else." [...]</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt><a href="/people/572/000049425/">TERRY GROSS</a></tt>:</td> <td>Excuse me. Excuse me one second. Did you just --</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>NORQUIST</tt>:</td> <td>Yeah?</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>TERRY GROSS</tt>:</td> <td>-- compare the estate tax with the Holocaust?</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>NORQUIST</tt>:</td> <td>No, the morality that says it's OK to do something to do a group because they're a small percentage of the population is the morality that says that the Holocaust is OK because they didn't target everybody, just a small percentage. What are you worried about? It's not you. It's not you. It's them. And arguing that it's OK to loot some group because it's them, or kill some group because it's them and because it's a small number, that has no place in a democratic society that treats people equally. [...]</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>TERRY GROSS</tt>:</td> <td>So you see taxes as being the way they are now terrible discrimination against the wealthy comparable to the kind of discrimination of, say, the Holocaust?</td></tr> <tr> <td align=right valign=top nowrap><tt>NORQUIST</tt>:</td> <td>Well, what you pick -- you can use different rhetoric or different points for different purposes, and I would argue that those who say, 'Don't let this bother you; I'm only doing it' -- I, the government. The government is only doing it to a small percentage of the population. That is very wrong. And it's immoral. They should treat everybody the same. They shouldn't be shooting anyone, and they shouldn't be taking half of anybody's income or wealth when they die.</td></tr> </table> </blockquote> Lately, Grover Norquist no longer garners the same respect out of Washington that he used to. Not for that insane Holocaust metaphor, but because of a lobbying firm he founded a few years back. The Islamic Institute had been working to promote policies which would help Arab causes. But then two passenger jets slammed into the <a href="http://www.rotten.com/library/history/wtc/">World Trade Center</a>, and suddenly nobody in the government could even pretend to care anymore about what the Arabs want. Incidentally, Grover's main hobby since the mid-'90s seems to have been the lionization of former President <a href="/people/359/000022293/">Ronald Reagan</a>. Years before Reagan's death, Norquist started championing things like replacing the portrait of <a href="/people/183/000022117/">Alexander Hamilton</a> with Reagan's on the $10 bill, or at least shoving <a href="/people/115/000024043/">Franklin D. Roosevelt</a> off the dime. These are not idle notions. In 1997 Norquist launched the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project, a group whose purpose is to convince the government to spend millions of taxpayer dollars (ironically) on things like a Ronald Reagan memorial monument in Washington, DC. After Reagan finally died in 2004, Norquist kicked it into overdrive. In a June 2004 appearance on CNN's Inside Politics, Grover told host <a href="/people/805/000050655/">Judy Woodruff</a>: "Alexander Hamilton has been on the $10 since 1928, he's been well honored by the country, he was a great secretary of the treasury. But of all the people on the currency, the only one who isn't a President." Which kind of hurt his credibility, because you'd think that Norquist would be aware that <a href="/people/578/000026500/">Benjamin Franklin</a> -- whose face is on the $100 bill -- was never President. That's the kind of assertion you'd maybe want to doublecheck before going on national television. And it's not like it would require a team of researchers. Father: Warren Norquist (Vice President, Polaroid) Mother: Carol Norquist (city tax assessor) Wife: Samah Alrayyes (m. 2-Apr-2005)     High School: Weston High School, Weston, MA     University: <a href="/edu/473/000068269/">BA Economics, Harvard University (1978)</a>     University: <a href="/edu/402/000127021/">MBA, Harvard Business School (1981)</a>     <a href="/media/003/000048856/">The American Spectator</a> Columnist     <a href="/company/638/000042512/">Microsoft</a> Washington lobbyist     <a href="/org/612/000117261/">US Chamber of Commerce</a> Economist, speechwriter (1983-84)     <a href="/org/453/000055288/">African American Republican Leadership Council</a> Advisory Panel     <a href="/org/638/000058464/">American Conservative Union</a> Board of Directors     <a href="/org/339/000048195/">American Enterprise Institute</a> Columnist for the AEI Newsletter     American Society of Competitiveness President     <a href="/org/549/000049402/">Americans for Tax Reform</a> President and Founder     <a href="/org/391/000130001/">America's Future Foundation</a> Executive Council     <a href="/org/175/000167671/">Bush-Cheney '04</a>     <a href="/org/984/000162498/">Citizens for America</a>     <a href="/org/770/000079533/">College Republicans</a> Executive Director     <a href="/org/556/000119199/">The Constitution Project</a> Liberty and Security Initiative     <a href="/org/700/000051547/">Council for National Policy</a>     <a href="/org/505/000042379/">Council on Foreign Relations</a>     <a href="/org/940/000277109/">GOProud</a> Advisory Council     <a href="/org/489/000049342/">The Heritage Foundation</a> Helped draft the 1994 "Contract with America"     <a href="/org/548/000049401/">Islamic Institute</a> President and Founder     <a href="/org/798/000122432/">Leadership Institute</a> Faculty     <a href="/org/843/000164351/">National Coalition to End Judicial Filibusters</a>     <a href="/org/809/000041686/">National Rifle Association</a> Life Member, sits on the Board of Directors     <a href="/org/028/000108701/">National Taxpayers Union</a> Executive Director (1981-83)     <a href="/org/173/000133771/">Nevada Policy Research Institute</a> Board of Advisors     <a href="/org/253/000053094/">Nixon Center</a> Board of Directors     <a href="/org/106/000355038/">Ryan for Congress</a>     <a href="/org/485/000135080/">TheVanguard.Org</a> Board of Advisors     <a href="/media/334/000172815/">The Harvard Crimson</a>     <a href="/group/483/000138069/">Abramoff Scandal</a>     <a href="/lists/823/000206205/">Evolution Skeptics</a>     <a href="/event/104/000369991/">Visited Burning Man</a> 2014     <a href="/lists/485/000050335/">Swiss Ancestry</a>     FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR     <a href="/films/070/000402858/">13th (30-Sep-2016)</a> · Himself     <a href="/films/816/000379676/">We're Not Broke (22-Jan-2012)</a> · Himself     <a href="/films/622/000267818/">Reagan (23-Jan-2011)</a> · Himself Author of books: Rock the House Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives <table> <tr> <td align=right valign=middle style="padding-right: 5px;">New! <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/" class="fotmlink" style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: #dd0000;">NNDB MAPPER</a></td> <td valign=middle align=right style="border-left: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: 5px;">Create a map starting with</td> <td valign=middle align=right><a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=49335"><img src="/man.gif" border=0 style="padding: 2px;"></a></td> <td align=left valign=middle> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=49335">Grover Norquist</a></td> </tr> </table> Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript. 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