A Republican Talks Sense on Taxes Just when House Republicans are about to provoke a new budget war, one of their own members has broken ranks and proposed a tax increase on the rich. Representative Rick Crawford, a freshman Republican from Arkansas, says the only serious way to begin cutting the deficit is to combine new tax revenue with spending cuts. On Thursday, he introduced a bill calling for a 5 percent surtax on incomes exceeding $1 million. The bill is hardly ideal because it requires Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution first. That's unrealistic, but more significantly such an amendment could make it hard or impossible for the government to use important tools - like TARP or stimulus - in times of a financial crisis or recession. Acknowledging that taxes need to go up is at least an opening to real bipartisan talks about bringing down the long-term deficit, precisely the kind of compromise that virtually all Mr. Crawford's Republican colleagues have resisted. Mr. Crawford was immediately vilified by Grover Norquist, the antitax vigilante, who said the plan would violate a no-new-tax pledge he signed when running for office. Mr. Crawford faces significant Democratic opposition in the fall and is clearly betting that agreeing to a widely popular tax increase will be more important to his voters than sticking with a foolish, lockstep pledge. No other members of Mr. Crawford's caucus have followed suit. In fact, on Tuesday, House leaders plan to unveil a budget that deliberately breaks last fall's agreement with the Senate and the White House, cutting spending below promised levels and upending Medicare, all to avoid raising taxes on the rich. The budget could lead directly to another wearying face-off with the Senate and a possible government shutdown later in the election year. Voters aren't likely to appreciate another round of brinkmanship and more disruption. But at least Republicans were warned, and this time by one of their own.