Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson on Wednesday used his eulogy of George H.W. Bush as an opportunity to praise the former president for agreeing to raise taxes despite campaigning against it as a candidate.
Simpson, who co-chaired a 2010 commission aimed at reducing the debt through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, recounted how Bush came to support a 1990 budget deal that raised taxes.
“Congressional participants drafted a remarkable bill that dealt with two-year budgeting, entitlement reform, comprehensive and catastrophic healthcare, Social Security solvency, and much more,” he said. “But it required a critical ingredient called ‘revenue,’ translated into the word ‘taxes,’ translated into the words ‘read my lips.’”
Simpson was referencing Bush’s famous pledge during the 1988 campaign, “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
He continued, “The group went to George and said, ‘Look, we can get this package done, but we must have some revenue.’ And he said — and I’ll never forget it — he said, ‘What I have said on that subject sure puts a hell of a lot of heat on me.’ And then they all said, ‘Yes, but we can get it done, and it will be bipartisan.’ And George said, ‘OK, go for it, but it will be a real punch in the gut.’”
Simpson went on to explain, “Bob Dole, then a loyal warrior for George, took it back to the Senate, and we won a very strong bipartisan vote. And it went over to the House where his own party turned on him — surely one of the factors ensuring his return to private life. But he often said, ‘When the really tough choices come, it’s the country, not me. It’s not about Democrats or Republicans, it’s for our country that I fought for.’”
Bush’s move — and the sense of betrayal felt by conservatives — changed American politics and fiscal policy, and its ripple effects are still felt to this day, with Republicans resistant to trade tax increases for the promise of future spending restraint, which did not materialize in the years after the 1990 budget deal.
Simpson, meanwhile, has been a fierce critic of Republican orthodoxy on taxes, and he has blasted anti-tax activist Grover Norquist as a “fraud.”
