No New Taxes! The Pledge of Prosperity – with Grover Norquist – [Ep. 137]

Linda J. Hansen  

Welcome. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Prosperity 101 Breakroom Economics Podcast. My name is Linda J. Hansen, your host, and the author of Prosperity 101 - Job Security Through Business Prosperity: The Essential Guide to Understanding How Policy Affects Your Paycheck, and the creator of the Breakroom Economics online course. The book, the course, and the entire podcast library can be found on Prosperity101.com. I seek to connect boardroom to breakroom and policy to paycheck by empowering and encouraging employers to educate employees about the public policy issues that affect their jobs.

My goal is to help people understand the foundations of prosperity, the policies of prosperity, and how to protect their prosperity by becoming informed, involved, and impactful. I believe this will lead to greater employee loyalty, engagement, and retention and to an increased awareness of the blessings and responsibilities of living in a free society. Listen each week to hear from exciting guests and be sure to visit Prosperity101.com.

Thank you for joining with me today. We all know the dreaded word taxes. And we likely share frustration as we pour our hard-earned dollars into a government that recklessly spends on efforts that undermine our national prosperity, security, sovereignty, and our personal freedoms. My guest today is Grover Norquist. Grover is the president of Americans for Tax Reform or ATR, a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan's request.

ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at federal, state, and local levels, and supports tax reform that moves towards taxing consumed income, one time at one rate. He is one of the most well-respected leaders in defense of individual freedom, economic prosperity, and limited government. I have learned greatly from his wisdom and leadership. Thank you, Grover, for being with us today.

Grover Norquist  

Absolutely. Thank you, Linda, for inviting me.

Linda J. Hansen  

Oh, it's my pleasure. And it's just an honor to have you on the podcast. Could you just give a little bit of background to listeners who may not know you or know of your work? Just a little background. You know, you obviously started ATR at President Reagan's request. And tell us a little more about you and the organization. And just a brief overview for those who may be having a first introduction.

Grover Norquist  

Oh, certainly. Right out of college, I became the Executive Director of the National Taxpayers Union, which at the time was the only national taxpayer group. And this was just as Proposition 13 in California and Proposition 2-1/2 in Massachusetts, and a series of initiatives were exploding where people were saying we really had it with taxation. And Ronald Reagan ran in 1980 and cutting taxes 30% across the board, the rates. So, it was a time when taxes were front and center.

I went back to business school, came back down. And Reagan asked if I would run Americans for Tax Reform, which was set up to help pass the Tax Reform Act of 1986. So, Reagan wanted to take the rates further down. He took the top rate from 70 to 50 in the first tax cut. And then the second one, he took the individual top rate or series of rates from a top rate of 50 to two rates at both 18. And – I'm sorry, 15 and 28. Top rate was 28. It'd be nice to go back to the top rate of 28 and a bottom rate of 15. That was a huge step forward in tax reform. We eliminated a lot of deductions and credits, is very helpful to the long-term economy.

But in order to pass that legislation – because people get very nervous when you make a thousand changes to the tax code in a dark room. What's really going to happen? And so, I created the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which is a very simple pledge that, at the time, 100 congressmen and 20 senators, most Republicans but not all – mostly but not all, signed the pledge that I'm never going to support or vote for a measure which increases tax rates or increases the total tax burden. So, tax reform, move it around, tax one thing more or something else, fine. But no net tax increase and no rate increases.

So, that was very helpful in the 1986 election. It was a big deal for people running for election. In 1988, every single Republican running for president except Bob Dole signed the pledge. And when he was called out during the New Hampshire Primary on television, they said, "Every other Republican is committed in writing to never raise taxes. What about you?" He, you know, mumbled nothing and lost the Primary he was expected to win in New Hampshire.

So, George Herbert Walker Bush won the Primary because he signed the pledge. He won the general election because he said, "Read my lips. I've taken the pledge never to raise taxes." Then he raised taxes and lost the presidency. A very successful presidency, other than the tax increase. Soviet Union destroyed, Iraq kicked out of Kuwait without sticking around for 25 years to watch what happens. So – but one problem, one hole in the road, tax increase, Bush loses.

So, in '94, that's what – about 98% of all the Republicans running for Congress signed the pledge and have kept it since. In the 62 years before 1994, the Republicans held the House and Senate for four years up to 62 years. This is a one-party state in Congress and Congress runs American presidents, get to start wars, and detail a few things, but Congress runs the country and passes the loss. Since '94, the Republicans have held the House and the Senate 60% of the time. 

So, we went from not even being on the playing field, the Republican Party, not being a competitor, like the Washington Generals is supposedly playing basketball but the Harlem Globetrotters beat them every game, to where there is a real competition, and the Republicans win more often than they lose Congress. So, being the party that will not raise your taxes has made the Republican Party competitive at the national level, which for 62 years, it was not.

And so, we've now taken that pledge to the state legislative level. We bring it up every election year. It's really helped to strengthen the let's not raise taxes coalition and the state level. Most of the Republican governors have signed the pledge never to raise taxes and kept it and many, many state legislators. I just was up in New Hampshire, 101 state legislators took the pledge together up there. Two-thirds of the Maine state legislatures, things are going well, and getting a commitment from state legislators. So, we're taking tax hikes off the table at the state level. And the Republicans have made it clear, "As long as Republicans have had the House or the Senate, we haven't raised taxes in this country since 1990."

Linda J. Hansen  

That is amazing.

Grover Norquist  

Before they all took the pledge.

Linda J. Hansen  

Yeah, that's amazing. And I've heard you say that this is really the difference between the two parties in a sense, is taxes are the difference.

Grover Norquist  

It is. There are some Democrats who won't steal your guns yet. And there's some Democrats who believe in religious liberty sort of. But there are no Democrats who will not raise your taxes, period. They just aren't. And there are almost no Republicans who would ever raise your taxes under any circumstances. And our job is to get that close to zero now. The national level, it is zero. But we want to get it down to zero at the state level as well.

Linda J. Hansen  

Well, this is really good. And for listeners, you know, these are things that you can check into with your elected officials, making sure that they have signed the pledge, holding them accountable to abide by the pledge. Because it's one thing to sign a pledge, it's one thing to give a campaign promise, and it's another to vote accordingly. So, for listeners, making sure that your elected officials know about the pledge, sign the pledge, abide by the pledge is going to be a real path to prosperity for your state and for our nation.

Grover Norquist  

Oh, absolutely. And one of the projects that we do in Americans for Tax Reform is we're supportive of those states that are looking to phase down their state income tax to zero. Today, there are eight states with no income tax at all – Texas, Florida, Tennessee, you know, pretty famous list of places people move to, including Democrat states like Washington state. They will not raise your taxes. They will not have an income tax by Constitution. Then there are nine states with a single rate tax. Massachusetts where I lived before I moved to United States –

Linda J. Hansen  

[Laughs]

Grover Norquist  

– they have a 5% single rate tax, very difficult to raise. You would think Massachusetts would be up at 10 like New Jersey and New York, and Minnesota, and California, and so on. Nope, they're five. In Illinois, it's at five. Why? Because they have a single rate tax. They have to raise everybody's taxes at once. They'd love to be at 10 for some people, at 15 for some people. But with a single rate tax, you can't take on everybody in the room at once.

So, the most important thing you can do for income tax at the state level is first, get it to a flat rate, so that it's difficult to raise and easy to cut. Easy to cut because whenever you reduce it, you say, "Everybody, you all benefit." Everybody gets a tax cut and you know exactly how much. We're going from 5% to 4%. No matter how much you make, you know what it's worth. And you know what your neighbors get, the same tax cut, but you know, 5% down to 4%, whatever the numbers are.

And then as soon as you go to a single rate tax, we then want to start the march to zero. So, there are today, four states – actually five now. Five – Idaho has just moved. Five states that aren't yet a single rate tax that have passed a law that says, "We're moving in the next three to four years to get one rate. Take the top rate down. The bottom rates, we're going to make go to zero. And so, in Iowa, it's going to 3.9%. In North Dakota, it's 1.5%. In Arizona, it's 2.5%, may go to 2.3%. So, they're getting more and more states could – like, in the next five years, 24 states will be at a single rate tax, either zero or some non-zero number. That's half the country.

Linda J. Hansen  

That's exciting.

Grover Norquist  

At that point, we begin to wonder, maybe we should have a flat rate single rate tax in Washington, too.

Linda J. Hansen  

Novel idea. Yeah, that would be great. Well, and what would be your argument? I'm sure there's listeners right now who may not be aware of how beneficial cutting taxes really is to, you know, overall economic prosperity for states, the nation, and for individuals. So, what would you say to those people who say, "Well, how can we pay for this program? How can we pay for that program?" What would you say to them?

Grover Norquist  

I would say take a look at Florida, 22 million people in Florida. And take a look at New York, 20 million people in New York. Florida is bigger than New York. Who would have thought that would happen? New York spends $200 billion a year on state spending. Florida with more people spends 100 billion. So, in Florida, they spend half as much per person, half as much for the size of the economy as New York have. So, what is – does New York have better roads? No. Does it have better schools? Absolutely not. What does New York do better? They give people bigger pensions. They hire more bureaucrats. And they spend more money doing less.

Linda J. Hansen  

Exactly.

Grover Norquist  

[Cross talk] People don't move from Florida to New York. They move from New York to Florida. So – well, how could you possibly – just ask Florida how they keep their cost down compared to New York. I mean, part of it is they have the right to work. They haven't unionized all their government employees. The government employees don't make gazillions of dollars and pensions, and few days of work, and compared to private sector people.

So, those to give you a sense that if you simply – if New York spent as well and competently as Florida, their tax burden would be half of what it is, and they wouldn't need an income tax at all. So, the argument is, why would you have an income tax since we know that there are other states without income taxes that perform as well or better? And the best way to say which state is doing well? Which states do people move to? Which states do they flee from?

Linda J. Hansen  

Right. And you mentioned New York, but there's also California. And even right now – I mean, this is another thing. I know that we can touch a little bit on the energy piece of this. I've heard you speak on this before, too. But if we look at California now, they have, you know, incredible taxes upon their citizens. But then also what they're providing to their citizens right now. You know, Californians are leaving for Texas, Florida, Tennessee, other states all over. And you know, right now, there's blackouts, brownouts. It's just a ridiculous mess in California. And it's all about policy and a lot of it starts with tax policy.

Grover Norquist  

Yeah. There's taxes. California, the top rate is 13.5%. If 1% of Californians left California, the higher-income people, their income tax revenues would drop by more than half. So, it doesn't take too many people leaving to bankrupt California. That's how dangerous the situation is for the education. More and more states are having school choice or better homeschooling laws, or vouchers, or making sure that money follows the student, not gets driven into the system.

People move towards states with freedom of education choice. They move to states with lower taxes or no income taxes. They move to states with better labor laws, where people can be independent contractors. It's illegal in California. You've seen thousands of truckers blockading the port because they've told the truckers, "You bought your truck to be your own boss, we say that's not legal." We say that's not legal. That's ridiculous.

And then add to what you just said, energy, energy, energy. California says, "You can't have a car that works on gasoline in a few years. Oh, and by the way, there are brownouts and blackouts. And please don't plug in your electric car during waking hours because we don't have enough energy and we have no intention of creating more electricity because we're green." So, they've told you to get out of your car and trust the electric vehicles. But then they also tell you in the same breath, there will not be enough energy to keep your battery going. The government will have control over when and how you can drive your car because all they have to do is turn off your ability to access more energy and you aren’t going anywhere.

Linda J. Hansen  

This is so good that you brought that up because whether it's taxes or these other policies, it is all about control.

Grover Norquist  

Yeah.

Linda J. Hansen  

And we talked before about the difference between Republicans and Democrats. But you know, our conversation has really evolved in our nation to it's not just Republicans and Democrats, it is globalism and tyranny versus freedom and national sovereignty. And, you know, we have to decide which side we're on. And these tax policies, these regulatory policies, the energy policies, they all erode our freedoms. And it has been such a frog in the pot of boiling water. People don't understand the terrible mess we're in right now. And how close we are actually losing so much of our freedoms in America.

Now, you mentioned like regulatory policy and these businesses and energy producers and things, could you address the corporate tax rate, too? We've talked about like personal tax rate. But a lot of people think that big business should be taxed more. Businesses should carry the tax brunt. But for those of us who are involved in this, we know that, you know, who pays the business taxes. It's the consumer. It's the employee who takes a lower wage for his work. And so, you know, could you address the corporate tax rate and what's kind of happening around the nation regarding corporate tax rate and regulatory reform?

Grover Norquist  

Sure. Government started taxing corporations because it was easier to tax your paycheck when your company had it before they wrote you your check or handed you your cash, rather than chasing you down at your home or down the street to get your money. Whereas when the General Motors had a bunch of money they were about to pay people, they come in and steal that. And then from what's left, you could pay the workers. If you let General Motors pay the workers and then you had to chase the workers around to get your money, well, that's just messier and nastier. And people would realize that – how expensive you were. So, it was an easier way to collect.

Today, the real goal of the advocates of corporate income tax is it hides who pays. General Motors will pay. You won't. Well, where does General Motors get money? It sells cars and the only way to get more money is to raise the price of cars. So, when taxes go up, the price of cars or linen, or sandwiches, or food, or oil, and natural gas, all of it goes up when you tax corporations, when you tax producers of goods and services, and those prices go up. 

The other way a company can save money in order to pay taxes is to reduce the wages of workers. And we saw that when the Republicans with President Trump cut the corporate income tax from 35% – this was highest in the world down to 21%, which is okay – not great, okay, much better than 35 – we saw in 2019, two years into that tax cut, the median family income per family of four went up by $6,800. I'm sorry. No, 6.8% or $4,400. It went up by 6.8%. I got my percentages, and numbers backwards. But that was a larger increase both in cash and as a percentage of your take-home pay. Then it happens during all eight years of Obama.

One year of the Trump Republican tax cuts put so much money into the hands of the private sector to invest to make workers more productive. When you make people more productive, you not only can pay them more, you have to pay them more because the guy down the street with his factory is investing in making people more productive. And he can afford to pay them more. And if you don't, he'll hire you guys away from you. So, competition brings price – brings the paychecks for people up as they become productive. That's not a gimme. That's not something you're giving somebody. That's something they're earning and that is a sustainable increase in wages. So, when you cut the capital gains tax, wages go up. When you raise the capital gains stocks, they go the other way.

Linda J. Hansen  

The corporate tax rate is such an important piece of an economic growth in America, but also economic growth for individuals. So, bringing that corporate tax rate down just really helps to drive productivity, wages, job growth, all of the above. And you mentioned the Trump administration, those policies – whether people love or hate Trump – there is no denying the numbers that occurred during the Trump administration regarding the jobless rate among women, minorities, you know, everyone across the board. Their incomes rose, like you mentioned. The job opportunities rose. Homeownership rose. We were having an economic boom before COVID.

Grover Norquist  

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And don't be fooled with some of the numbers Biden puts out. He will give you, "Oh, look, unemployment is love." There are two different measures of unemployment. One says, "Of people looking, what percentage can't find something?" Okay. That's what he wants to quote. The other is, "Of people of the age to be working, what percentage cannot get a job?" Okay? They would like a job if they could. So, the labor force participation rate.

The reason why the unemployment number looks okay for Biden is that 3.4 million Americans have quit looking for work. So, they don't count as unemployed. They are unemployed but they don't count. It's as if they were in prison or had retired. Okay? But they're between 25 and 55. They wouldn't be working. They were working at one point. They should be working. But they've just decided to walk out and say, "I'm not looking anymore because there's welfare available way beyond what existed before Biden and the Democrats started throwing money around to people."

So, when Trump and the Republicans had the unemployment down, the percentage of the population working was going up. More people who've been sitting on the sidelines said, "Hey, there's work. They're paying better. I'm going to jump in and get work. That's what I want to do." So, they go in and the labor force participation, people of age to working went up. During Biden, it went down. During Obama, it went down, the labor force participation. People leave the workforce if you hand them free money and welfare.

Linda J. Hansen  

Well, and this is just another example of how then the working people pay for those who are not working, kind of like the student loan.

Grover Norquist  

Yes.

Linda J. Hansen  

Yeah. It's so many people who maybe didn't go to college or who already paid their debts, their college debts, whatever, you know, now they're paying for that, you know.

Grover Norquist  

It is a huge, huge insult to Americans who worked hard, saved, sacrificed, had a second job, a third job to go to college, to get their kids through college, to be told that they're going to be handing out money to people who went to graduate school to business school, or medical school, or law school. A lot of these loans are for people who are perfectly well off and to borrow a bunch of money to become a doctor pays off in the end. Okay? And they know it. They don't need special help to do that, business school, law school. This is very, very unfair what Biden is doing.

Grover Norquist  

He's trying to buy votes. But the votes he's trying to buy are not so much the students. It's the 700,000 professors, and the several times that number of bureaucrats in the education establishment, in higher education, people who administer wokeness. You wonder, you know, how do these people get a job when all they did was study being aggrieved about something and woke? Well, because they're now jobs at universities to make sure everybody's welcome. Poke them if they're not.

Linda J. Hansen  

Right.

Grover Norquist  

And those people are getting paid much more money than you or I. And they're just getting – they've got this lifetime job at the University of something or other, going around annoying people by saying, "I think you're insufficiently woke. And I've decided a new rule for wokeness and you haven't passed it yet." These are the people who waste the time and make college less useful.

And one of the things that  Trump did was he said, "You don't need a college degree to come to the federal government. Do Math – you can read or do Math, or whatever the skill set is. But this idea that going to college means you know how to work is not a – or know how to do so. It's not true anymore.

Linda J. Hansen  

No.

Grover Norquist  

Not the way these guys have been running these schools. Come show us how well you write. Don't tell me I have a degree from University of Massachusetts. That doesn't necessarily mean anything anymore and that's very sad. It's a lot of money to pay for a piece of paper that doesn't tell you what you need to know about somebody you'd like to hire.

Linda J. Hansen  

That's a good point. And you mentioned you know, the wokeness and you mentioned the word bureaucrat. And before we close the interview, I want to touch on the bureaucratic state, the administrative state, the growth and expansion of our federal government, and a lot of these state governments. You mentioned how Florida, you know, keeps costs down with a low tax rate because they don't bloat their government with, you know, extra people and extra pension funds and things.

But, you know, at the federal level, a lot of people think there's, you know, a couple of dozen agencies, you know. We hear about the big ones, you know, education, you know, Bureau of Land Management, Health and Human Services, you know, things like that. But really, there's – isn't there like over 600 federal agencies that our tax dollars are paying for?

Grover Norquist  

There are a huge number of agencies and one of the things that is helpful – and here's – let me sort of towards the end and say something cheerful about the prospects of liberty in America. There are 50 states and federalism. That means a good idea, like school choice or term limits, or transparency. Somebody can see all their books or phasing down your income tax. You do that in one state, everybody can see that it works, and then more states want to do it. And if you have a stupid idea, like government-run health care, which Vermont did – they said, "We're going to have a single-payer government program in Vermont." They voted it and then they abolished it in Vermont because it wasn't going to work and they didn't want everybody to see the failure. 

So, when they have a bad idea, they have to impose it in Washington top down. Good ideas, we can start in a small state, a big state, and then take them sideways to all the other states. That's – federalism works for us because we can take a good idea and make it work in one state. Wisconsin showed welfare reform work and school choice work and really sparked a revolution that is now paying greater dividends from an idea in Wisconsin that they have never passed in Washington, DC standalone. 

Then the other part of that is the Supreme Court, which used to sort of put its thumbs on the scale of statism, give power to Washington, give power to big government, religious liberty, know all these issues. Now, all of a sudden, there's six people on the Supreme Court who have read the Constitution most of the way through at least once, and when asked, they're saying, "You know what? Where does the Constitution allow Congress to set up some bureaucracy and tell them to pass laws and administer fines, and things like?" That's not in the Constitution. Amend the Constitution if you want to take power away from Congress and hand it to some unelected bureaucrat.

And now that Congress is going to have to vote stupid things, instead of "We're for niceness. Go to find niceness over there, EPA." You know, the Environmental Protection Agency. And then when they do something bad and shut down people's jobs, the congressman, "I didn't do that. The bureaucracy did that. I had nothing to do with it," except they gave the power to the bureaucracy. Supreme Court is saying, "You can't give the power away."

And when the EPA imagined certain powers, the federal – the Supreme Court said, "No, you don't have those powers. Congress voted them for you. You might be able to claim them." But there's even a case that Congress can't even give you – they can't divorce themselves with powers. The President of the United States can't go, "I'm busy. Fred, the  baker will be doing vetoes now." That's not in the Constitution. You can't give your power to veto to somebody else, any more you should be able to give your power to legislate to somebody else. 

And if Congress has to kill what it eats, if Congress has to only enforce laws that it passes, and that might come back to bite them if the country goes, "That was pretty stupid. Why'd you do that?" And they can't go, "Oh, bureaucracy, they did it." I think we get much better and more limited government, both because Congress is going to have to pass laws if they want something to happen. They can't give it to bureaucracy. And the Supreme Court is not in there putting their finger on the scale to make believe what direction things are going.

And at the state level, good ideas can come up and go sideways across the country, and then maybe to Washington after 40 states have done something. So, there's some real pathways to greater liberty that have been opened up by a constitutional Supreme Court, by federalism at the state level, and by limiting the ability of Congress to hand power to bureaucracies.

Linda J. Hansen  

Very good. And, you know, the Constitution you mentioned, you know, that maybe people should read it at least once. Right? And – but citizens and listeners, this is one of my hopes that people will be inspired to actually read the Constitution. If nothing else read the Bill of Rights.

On my website, I offer a poster pack that people can use in workplace or school. And one of the posters is simply the Bill of Rights. And it says, "Are you voting for a person who will protect your rights?" Most people have no idea what their rights are, like they really don't know. They hear about things from, you know, Facebook or TikTok, or something. And they really don't know.

And you mentioned education. We haven't had solid educational choice. So, they've not been taught how to not only respect and read the Constitution, but how to glean from its wisdom, and then how to be an active and engaged citizen, which in turn holds elected officials accountable. So, those are all really important things.

Linda J. Hansen  

And as we close, what would you tell employers, employees in the workplace about how to discuss these issues in the workplace? You know, I have a heart for employers to educate employees who maybe came up through an educational system that did not serve them well. And they just need to learn the basics of American civics, basic economics. But there may be employees who now in this age of wokeness are working for, you know, a very woke employer, and they need to bring these concepts up into the workplace. We can do so in a non-partisan way. What would you recommend?

Grover Norquist  

Well, I think if you're an employer or a small businessman, do what thousands of business did with the Republican Trump tax cut. They would give people raises and then say, "Look, the reason why I can afford to give you this raise is because the tax rates are lower. And therefore, our company is going to be growing. We're going to be hiring more people. We're going to hire more talent. We're going to invest more in your competencies and your ability to function. We'll get you better equipment. We'll get you a better truck. You can make more money driving the same amount of time. But a better bigger truck makes you more productive. We'll get you a better computer, which makes you more productive, so we can pay you more."

And I think it was very helpful at the beginning of the Trump tax cuts, AT&T gave everybody $1,000. And they said, "This is a downpayment on our ability to increase your productivity and pay you more. It's going to be more than 1,000. We don't know what it is. We know it's at least 1000. Please don't go work somewhere else. We'll work this out." And so, there were many – in Americans for Tax Reform, we put all the ones that we saw written up in the newspapers up online at our website, ATR.org, which, you know, just good news that came from that.

Businesses need to just tell – level with workers and say, "This is why I can afford to pay you more. This is why we're hiring Mary to join us because we can afford to because the government doesn't steal as much money." Don't take it as a black box. If you don't tell people how and why they get a pay increase, the Democrats will go, "Oh, if you pass the minimum wage, that's how you get a pay increase." No, it's not. That's how you keep people unemployed. It's what happened during – in South Africa, as a way to keep people out of work. You know, minimum wages make it illegal to get people starter jobs.

Linda J. Hansen  

Yeah, exactly. So, those are really good points. And so, as we close, I know people can reach you by going to ATR.org.

Grover Norquist  

Yeah.

Linda J. Hansen  

That is the Americans for Tax Reform Website. And listeners, Grover mentioned some of these articles and things that are there, that website, ATR.org is a wealth of information regarding tax reform, tax policy. You can read the Taxpayer Protection Pledge there. You can take it to your elected officials and encourage them to sign it. And you can become a more informed citizen to protect your own financial prosperity and actually the security and sovereignty of our nation. So, please do that. Do you have any other closing comments, Grover?

Grover Norquist  

No, I think that's it. We're going to win. It's going to take a while. But state by state, federalism makes it easier. And a Supreme Court that's read the Constitution makes it easier to pass good laws and avoid bad laws.

Linda J. Hansen  

Exactly. And I would just add to that to say, listeners, read the Constitution, so you can hold all of your elected officials and your appointed officials accountable. And we hold to the Constitution and the rule of law in America, and we get sanity back into our government. So, thank you, Grover. It's been a pleasure and an honor to have you on the podcast today. So, I hope to have you back.

Grover Norquist  

Linda, thank you very much.

Linda J. Hansen  

Thank you.

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