"If Raising Taxes Is a Nonstarter in This Environment, Change the Environment"

"Although Brown did not put it this way, this idea is the reverse of a Republican strategy known as 'starve the beast,' in which politically popular tax cuts are intended to force subsequent reductions in government spending. The notion is most identified with Grover Norquist, the antitax advocate (and a powerful foe of Brown’s bid to extend California’s tax increases), who has said he wants to shrink government so that you could 'drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.' What Brown is proposing is to demonstrate just how disruptive a radically smaller government would be. Government might become so diminished that Californians demand to rescue it from Norquist’s bathtub."

Adam Nagourney in The New York Times Magazine profiles Governor Jerry Brown.