"The spending interests always want more money.".

• Position: FOR THE RECORD: GROVER NORQUIST - Interview

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform, an advocacy group that supports making taxes "simpler, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today."

He has been described as one of the most powerful conservative voices in Washington, D.C., and was considered highly influential in the debate over raising the debt ceiling that played out in August. His Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose any and all tax increases has been signed by 1,263 state legislators, 236 members of the U.S. House and 41 U.S. senators.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Norquist spoke with State Legislatures about state budgets, taxes and public education.

State Legislatures: Do you think there is a situation where states would need more revenue?

Grover Norquist: Need, no. Want, yes. And by states, we mean politicians who are in power in a particular state. The spending interests always want more money.

SL: Does keeping up with education funding justify a tax increase?

Norquist: The goal is not to see how much money you can spend on something. The goal is to actually get education. The one thing we know from the last 30 years is that spending more money and calling it education, when you are just keeping the teachers' union happy, obviously has nothing to do with education. I live in D.C. We spend a lot of money, and they write education over the top of the check, but it doesn't have anything to do with anyone learning how to read. People who want to measure how much you are spending--rather than what you are doing--have created the mess we are in. Throwing more money at failed systems doesn't make any sense. There isn't a state in this nation that isn't spending a lot more money compared to what it is getting and compared to what its taxpayers want. Certainly, we should have full school choice. Parents should have complete control of where their kids go to school. Public, private, Jewish day schools, whatever parents want. The state could give them some sort of stipend and let people make their own decisions. There is no reason not to. We don't have Soviet collective fanning, but we do have the mentality of collective farming in state-run education, and it doesn't work much better.

SL: How successful do you think your organization has been in terms of preventing tax increases?

Norquist: We've had a great deal of success, but not as much as we'd like. Some states, such as Illinois, had very few pledge takers. They just raised the income tax. On the other hand...