WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Republican presidential candidate and US Senator Rand Paul signed a Taxpayer Protection Pledge that commits him to oppose and veto any efforts to raise taxes in the United States if he is elected, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) announced in a release on Friday.
“By signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to the American people, Senator Paul continues to protect American taxpayers against higher taxes,” ATR President Grover Norquist said in the statement.
“Senator Paul understands that government should be reformed so that it takes and spends less of the taxpayers’ money, and will oppose tax increases that paper over and continue the failures of the past.”
Paul is the first Republican presidential candidate to sign such a pledge for the 2016 race, and he signed it once before as a US Senate candidate in 2010 and kept his pledge, according to ATR.
In the 2012 presidential race, all Republican presidential candidates signed the Pledge except for Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman.
ATR works with state taxpayer coalitions in all 50 US states to ask candidates for state legislature and constitutional office to sign the State Taxpayer Protection Act, according to the organization’s website.
