Post Event Summary
On Thursday at AEI, Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist discussed his recent book, “Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future” (co-authored with John Lott, Jr.) and offered his perspective on the future of conservative policy and politics in the United States.

Norquist identified a number of recent policies that have been counterproductive to economic recovery, singling out the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as an example of a particularly costly and ineffective reform. In comparing both previous American recoveries from recession and the recoveries of other industrialized counties since 2008, Norquist highlighted how unusually slow the U.S. economy has been in rebounding, placing the blame squarely on the president’s policies.

Norquist additionally discussed the interplay between pro-growth policies and electoral politics — in the 2012 election as well as the coming decade — which will define the future of America. He rejected calls for “compromise,” arguing that such a term is meaningless when Democrats and Republicans want to go in totally different directions. Instead, he argued in favor of gridlock as a bulwark against poor policy ideas.

Event Description
Are Americans better off today than they were before Barack Obama was elected to office? Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist and economist John Lott, Jr. argue that increases in government spending, mounting debt, new regulations and higher effective marginal tax rates collectively answer this question with a resounding “no.”

In their new book entitled "Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future," Norquist and Lott explore how policies promulgated by the current administration have increased unemployment, slowed economic growth, produced dramatically higher national debt and damaged the housing market.

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