The No-New-Taxes Pledge

Captain Ed points to an article that informs us that as of today, the two frontrunners in the GOP '08 race have not signed the pledge promoted by Americans for Tax Reform:

The two front-runners for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination -- Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani -- have not signed an anti-tax-increase pledge that has been embraced by several of their rivals.
The reluctance of the party's two leading candidates to sign the pledge, which has been signed by every Republican presidential nominee since 1988, raised concerns among conservative tax cutters about Mr. McCain's and Mr. Giuliani's commitment to reduce tax rates at a time when all of the Democratic presidential contenders have vowed to raise income taxes if they are elected. ...

The pledge, which asks the candidates to sign a statement declaring they will "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates," could become an issue for both men as they vie for the support of their party's economic conservatives -- especially for Mr. McCain who was a foe of President Bush's tax cuts until he began actively running for president last year.

The Arizona senator, who has been aggressively reaching out to the conservative base of his party to secure the nomination, was one of only two Republicans who voted against Mr. Bush's $1.35 trillion across-the-board tax cuts in 2001. He also opposed accelerating the tax cuts in 2003, but changed his mind last year and voted to extend the tax cuts, including those on stock dividends and capital gains.

Mr. Giuliani has yet to fully set forth his views on tax policy, but, like Mr. McCain, has said that the Bush tax cuts, most of which are due to expire in 2010, should be made permanent.

Although maintaining or reducing the marginal rates should be a goal of any GOP candidate, I think a new pledge might be in order. How about a no-new-entitlements-program pledge? President Bush may have signed the ATA's tax pledge, but that didn't stop him from approving the new medicare prescription drug benefit and other entitlements that will explode the size of government. If we didn't keep adding to the entitlement pie, tax increases wouldn't be a problem.

Perhaps McCain and Giuliani know that thanks to increasing entitlements, it will be nearly impossible to hold tax rates at current levels, and therefore they aren't excited about signing a pledge they know they will have to break. Nobody wants to be the star of another "read my lips" moment.

We need to start pushing GOP candidates for entitlement reform, and then maybe the ATA's tax pledge won't be necessary.