Goldberg: Norquist Wrong On Ethanol

Jonah Goldberg writes at National Review Online:

I’ve not paid proper attention to this ethanol brouhaha with Grover Norquist. I gather the topic’s rather moot now given yesterday’s vote, but if I can just chime in for a second. If I understand the Norquist-pledge-purist position, a pledge-taker cannot vote to get rid of an idiotic, market-skewing, statist, tax credit (or if you prefer tax expenditure) because it will amount to an increase in taxes. Here’s how Andrew Stiles explained it yesterday:

. . . At issue is the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” that Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, urges all GOP lawmakers (and any willing Democrats) to take. All but seven Republicans in the Senate — including Coburn — and all but six in the House have signed on. Signers promise to oppose any tax increase as well as “any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.”

Coburn’s amendment eliminated tax breaks for the ethanol industry but did not include any offsetting tax cuts. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that his proposal would raise $2.4 billion in new tax revenue over the remainder of the year, which Coburn intended to put toward reducing the deficit. Norquist, therefore, denounced the amendment as a violation of the pledge.

I’m sorry but that’s nuts. I understand why ATR has to write the pledge in as binding and exhaustive a form as possible so as to keep tax-hikers from playing games. But this is simply one of those areas where if the pledge is the law, and the law says you can’t kill an ethanol subsidy, than the law is an ass.*