Corbett And Norquist Disagree On Tax Definition

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Grover Norquist

Grover Norquist is now call­ing Corbett’s county-level Mar­cel­lus Shale impact fee a tax.

So something’s got to give, right?

Appar­ently not. Speak­ing to the Penn­syl­va­nia Press Club this after­noon, Cor­bett said he “disagree[s] with [Norquist’s] opin­ion on that.”

Norquist — who’s a big fan of Cor­bett, to the point of float­ing him as a pos­si­ble future pres­i­den­tial con­tender — was ini­tially on board with Corbett’s pro­posal, which keeps the levy on the county level.

The two men part ways on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of income. To Norquist, the fee becomes a tax as soon as it dis­trib­utes money to state gov­ern­ment, even though Corbett’s pro­posal, writ­ten into House Bill 1950, lim­its the rev­enue to depart­ments deal­ing directly with drilling.

Norquist posted his “tax” rul­ing on the Amer­i­cans for Tax Reform web­site, just hours before last week’s House vote on the mea­sure. It didn’t seem to have much of an imme­di­ate impact: the leg­is­la­tion cleared the Republican-controlled House on a 107–76 vote.

The vote was a rare set­back for Norquist, whose anti-tax pledge has become a “must” for Repub­li­cans seek­ing office across the coun­try. The promise’s lan­guage, and def­i­n­i­tions of what is and isn’t a tax, held up this summer’s debt ceil­ing negotiations.

Cor­bett isn’t the only Penn­syl­va­nia politi­cian to part ways with Norquist: the anti-tax cru­sader gave the cold shoul­der to Sen­a­tor and Super­com­mit­tee mem­ber Pat Toomey’s plan to com­prise with Democ­rats on spend­ing cuts, by rais­ing $300 bil­lion in new taxes. As Politico reported, Norquist emailed, “If it was the final bill, it would be poi­son for tax­pay­ers, tea party sup­port­ers and Republicans…As a nego­ti­at­ing posi­tion to bring Democ­rats toward tax reform, it was not treason.”