Patriot Update

Today, multiple high-ranking Republicans announced that they were willing to raise taxes as part of a deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” breaking the pledges they had made to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform. Said Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos:

I agree with Grover, we shouldn’t raise rates, but I think Grover is wrong when it comes to we can’t cap deductions and buy down debt. What do you do with the money? I want to buy down debt and cut rates to create jobs, but I will violate the pledge, long story short, for the good of the country, only if Democrats will do entitlement reform.

Graham did say he would not vote to raise tax rates, but that he would vote to cap deductions. “If you cap deductions around the $30,000, $40,000 range, you can raise $1 trillion in revenue, and the people who lose their deductions are the upper-income Americans,” said Graham.