The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, has a lovely interview with Michael Grunwald of Politico in which Mr. Norquist talks about taxes and also spending:
MG: People don't seem to like paying taxes.
GN: Look at the states; it's still a very powerful issue. In Massachusetts, there was a gas tax initiative in 2014. Everyone loves the gas tax, right? It's for infrastructure! Nope. Not even Massachusetts. The governor of Nevada raised taxes and that was repealed, 80-20. Tennessee, Georgia, we've had a tremendous collection of votes against taxes. In Michigan, the Republican governor and the Democrats wanted to raise taxes, and that was defeated 80-20. In Maryland, Martin O'Malley's lieutenant governor lost because O'Malley raised taxes. In Pennsylvania, the Republican governor raised taxes and lost. In Illinois, the Democratic governor raised taxes and lost. Illinois! And look at consistent tax cutters – Rick Scott in Florida, Doug Ducey in Arizona, Paul LePage in Maine. They got reelected. Chris Christie vetoed more taxes, dollarwise, than anyone else in history, and he got reelected in New Jersey...
On spending, Mr. Norquist:
Now we've got a campaign to get the entire membership of the appropriations committee term-limited to six years, so nobody goes completely native. You can't help it if you're on the committee for 20 years. You can't swim against that spending current for that long. We also want to establish an anti-appropriations committee, which we actually had during World War II. Its only job was to recommend budget reductions and the elimination of programs, and it saved billions of dollars. It killed the Civilian Conservation Corps. It killed the Works Projects Administration, where they painted the outsides of post offices. It ended a lot of New Deal stuff that might otherwise be multi-billion-dollar operations today. We ought to do that again.