Politics: No Taxation via Litigation
Norquist, Grover G.
P 0 L irTAK C by Grover G. Norquist No Taxation via Litigation Regulation is out, litigation is in. The era of big government may be over, but the era of regulation through litigation has just...
...Eleven states have passed laws forbidding their cities from joining lawsuits against firearms makers...
...In Congress Republicans treated Clinton's statement as a concession speech for the liberal welfare state, the domestic equivalent of the fall of Communism...
...The supreme courts of Ohio, Vermont, and New Hampshire have ruled that the state constitution demands equal spending on education across different towns and cities...
...In Texas, new Republican Attorney General John Cornyn discovered that his Democratic predecessor had forged documents to divert some $260 million in legal fees from the tobacco settlement to a crony with no connection to the case...
...In the 1996 cycle that number jumped to $20 million...
...The new lawsuits filed by five cities against the firearms manufacturers are less about money—the entire industry has only $1.5 billion in sales per year—and more about imposing gun control through the courts or a settlement...
...Pryor points out that while Republicans control 31 governorships there are only 14 Republican attorneys general—twelve elected and two appointed...
...In 1993, popular opposition to tax increases was so strong that even with strong Democratic majorities in Congress Clinton was barely able to raise taxes, forcing Al Gore to cast the deciding vote in the Senate and winning by only one vote in the House...
...How many other tort lawyers, who'll rake in $20 billion in fees over the next zo years, have made similarly corrupt bargains with key Democrats...
...But legislatures in Florida, Vermont, and Maryland actually rewrote the laws to strip the tobacco industry of all common law defenses...
...It will compete with the•4 The states' tobacco suits were about money...
...All such regulations would have to be submitted to a vote of Congress before becoming law...
...Even with some leakage, this containment strategy would over time bring down the cost of government...
...The cities' suits against firearms makers are about gun control...
...There were good reasons for optimism...
...The tobacco settlement of $246 billion over ten years dwarfs past settlements on asbestos and breast implants, and compares with Clinton's 1993 tax hike of $262 billion over five years...
...When its desired tax hike was defeated by a margin of 80-20 by voters, the Ohio supreme court renewed demands for higher taxes...
...In 1997 Republicans managed to win the first (albeit modest) tax cut in 16 years...
...has introduced legislation forbidding the executive branch from imposing new regulatory costs...
...Judges have ruled that prisoners must have color televisions and granted welfare recipients the "right" to more of other people's money...
...Three Democratic attorneys general (including Mississippi's Moore) will be up for re-election in the fall, and nine more will run for re-election in November 2000 (as opposed to only one Republican attorney general up for reelection...
...In New Hampshire the court may force an income tax hike on voters famous for rejecting such efforts...
...The American Spectator • August 1999 63...
...This misuse of the courts to end-run the executive and legislative branches of government is an ever-growing problem...
...GOP leaders announced they planned to pass a tax cut each and every year—and never pass a tax hike...
...0 n the national stage, 1997's $246-billion tobacco settlement convinced all political players that new rules were in play...
...Following the anti-trust attack on Standard Oil in 1907, the Standard and Poors stock index fell 38 percent...
...This effort represents another end-run around Congress and state legislatures, which have been moving in the other direction...
...Hayworth (R-Ariz...
...Hence the otherwise inexplicable "settlement" it agreed to...
...Bob Barr (R-Ga...
...has introduced legislation barring such lawsuits by state or local governments against gun manufacturers...
...The lawsuit would be a bargaining chip for settling the case...
...Meanwhile, tort lawyers are touting plans to go after producers and manufacturers of lead paint, pharmaceuticals, liquor and beer, chemical additives, and even fatty foods...
...At the state level, between 1990 and 1994 tort lawyers spent $17 million on politics in just three states, Alabama, Texas, and California —more than the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee spent in all fifty states in those years...
...The left has begun to rely on litigation to force tax increases, additional regulatory burdens, and massive transfers of wealth from productive Americans to parasitic class-tort lawyers...
...62 August 1999 • The American Spectator from $30 billion in 1977 to $16o billion in 1996 —two-and-a-half times what is spent by government on all police and fire protection...
...Federal judges are not subject to elections...
...This had resulted in weakening local control of both education and tax policy...
...There will soon be an opportunity to change this imbalance...
...The era of big government may be over, but the era of regulation through litigation has just begun...
...Economist Larry Kudlow points out that the Clinton administration is using anti-trust "law" in the same fashion...
...But that's irrelevant...
...The new strategy of the Democrats and the tort lawyers is self-financing...
...The business community is waking up to this new threat and the 2000 elections could find the American business community driven into the arms of the Republican Party, re-creating a governing alliance not seen since the 1900 election of William McKinley...
...T he Clinton administration has opened two new fronts in its effort to raise taxes via litigation...
...Alabama Attorney General William Pryor has organized a Republican Association of Attorneys General, to be housed at the Republican National Committee...
...Litigation is becoming the weapon of choice for expanding the size and scope of government...
...Trial Lawyers would quality as a third party in American politics except that they are firmly lodged inside the Democratic Party...
...Chamber of Commerce estimates that litigation abuse costs rose Courts allow regulators an end-run around Congress...
...These will amount to regulatory changes and tax hikes not achievable through the democratic process...
...Republicans were imposing containment on big government by opposing any tax increases...
...Clinton is also asking Congress for $20 million to allow Janet Reno's Justice Department to sue tobacco companies to "recover" the costs to Medicare of tobacco-related illnesses...
...The Justice Department's anti-trust division has targeted Intel, Microsoft, Office Depot, MasterCard, Visa, and the airline industry in order to win regulatory powers not granted by Congress...
...The U.S...
...1 Democrat-run National Association of Attorneys General, which has been a driving force in lawsuit abuse...
...Thwarted on tax hikes, liberals found the Republicans also working to curb the regulatory state...
...In Utah, the Republican governor and state legislature passed a law telling the liberal Democratic attorney general that she is the governor's lawyer and not allowed to file lawsuits without his okay...
...Robert Reich is candid about the left's new strategy...
...The United States Chamber of Commerce is leading a coalition of business and free-market organizations to defeat Clinton's Szo-million request...
...While the gun manufacturers tried to strike a preemptive deal with the cities, the National Rifle Association went on the counter-offensive...
...This coming onslaught has convinced conservatives that they need to organize...
...for president had signed the pledge against new taxes...
...In the 1990, 1992, and 1994 election cycles tort lawyers contributed $5 million each cycle for federal candidates...
...Courts have allowed government to grow in a way no legislature or governor would allow...
...If Clinton wins, the federal government would have a precedent to turn its guns on a new company or industry each year to strip it clean for campaign contributions and expensive settlements...
...Under traditional tort law, plaintiffs claiming cigarettes caused their diseases would have had to prove actual damage causation, and speak to the issue of their own responsibility in smoking...
...If Congress accepts this change, a company that fought a lawsuit and lost would pay punitive damages after taxes...
...First, the president's budget would end the federal tax deduction on punitive damage payments...
...As part of the Contract With America, Congress voted to forbid most unfunded mandates, which force state and local governments to raise taxes to meet regulatory standards imposed on them by federal rules...
...Indeed, by May of this year every single Republican running GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
...State judges, who are subject to minimal electoral scrutiny, find that lengthystate constitutions provide opportunities for judicial activism...
...The Weekly Standard ran a cover headline screaming, "We Won...
...When Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore and the Castano group— a collection of wealthy trial lawyers who "invested" millions in planned lawsuits—teamed up to sue tobacco companies it wasn't clear they had a strong case...
...Last year's round of suits was to pay for Medicaid costs...
...When Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft launched 44 and 65 antitrust cases respectively, the stock market did not rise again to its 1907-1908 levels until 1924...
...but if it settled instead of fought, it would be allowed to deduct these payments as a business expense...
...In Vermont, former Reagan adviser John McClaughry sponsored legislation that would require the state's attorney general to obtain permission from the legislature before joining lawsuits...
...Robert Reich is blunt about this strategy: "Many legal experts doubt the federal government has the authority to launch such a lawsuit...
...Commerce Committee Chairman Thomas Bliley's Regulatory Right to Know Act would require the government to calculate and make public the costs and claimed benefits of all regulations...
...Robert Reich, former secretary of labor, USA Today, February 11, 1999 W hen President Clinton declared in his 1996 State of the Union address that "the era of big government is over," conservatives applauded...
...Of course, in politics, as in chess, the other team gets to move as well...
...They've been stronger at defending against tax hikes at all levels—federal, state, and local—through such measures as a two-thirds supermajority requirement to raise taxes and the Taxpayer Protection Pledge...
...The tobacco lawsuits were about money...
...Kudlow warns that not only does anti-trust law give unlimited power to a president or attorney general to attack any business, but that the uncertainty anti-trust laws breed can do harm to the economy...
Vol. 32 • August 1999 • No. 8
