Topic: Grover Norquist

Grover Glenn Norquist (born October 19, 1956) is president of a taxpayer advocacy group, Americans for Tax Reform. He has been described as "the driving force in pushing the Republican Party toward an ever-more rigid position of opposing any tax increase, of any kind, at any time."

Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts, the son of Carol (Lutz) and Warren Elliott Norquist. He attended Weston High School. His father served as vice president of Polaroid Corporation. He became involved with politics at an early age and in his early teenage years Norquist volunteered for the 1968 Nixon campaign, assisting with get out the vote efforts. He enrolled at Harvard University in 1974, where he would obtain both a BA and MBA. While in school, Norquist was an editor at the Harvard Crimson and helped to publish the libertarian-leaning Harvard Chronicle. Norquist has said: "When I became 21, I decided that nobody learned anything about politics after the age of 21." He attended the Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia, an organization that teaches conservative Americans how to influence public policy through activism and leadership.

Norquist is best known for founding Americans for Tax Reform in 1985, which he did at the request of President Ronald Reagan. The primary policy goal of Americans for Tax Reform is to reduce the percentage of the GDP consumed by the federal government. ATR states that it "opposes all tax increases as a matter of principle." Americans for Tax Reform seeks to curtail government spending by supporting Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) legislation and transparency initiatives, and opposing cap-and-trade legislation and Democratic efforts to overhaul health care.