The belief that tax reform is too grand and visionary to top the domestic agenda, while wrong, is understandable. The president's ill-advised Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform recently recommended that individual and corporate income taxes should be left in place regardless of their steeply progressive rate schedules and top marginal rates in excess of 30 percent. Were the president to follow that advice, tax reform would indeed go the way of his failed Social Security reform for exactly the same reasons: His outside advisory groups in both cases misunderstood what needs to be done. Handicapped by their use of static analysis, they tinkered timidly rather than reforming boldly.
It's not surprising that one pessimistic adviser the Telegraph quoted is the Cato Institute's Michael Tanner, who took leave from Cato to advise the President's Social Security Commission: "Another adviser summoned to the (recent White House) meetings (Tanner) said the chances of resuscitating a battered administration were very limited. "This is an exhausted administration. It's going to be very hard for (them) to come out with a big new initiative.'"
Ugh, what pessimism!
Where tax reform differs dramatically from Social Security reform is that the Democrats will be unable to stonewall it the way they did Social Security reform. One can feel the palpable urgency among Democrats to "fix" the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is raising taxes every year on rich and upper-middle-class Democrats.
Doing nothing on taxes is unthinkable for Democrats. That's why shortsighted proposals by some Republicans to "fix" the Alternative Minimum Tax (a bunt) rather than replacing the Internal Revenue Code with something entirely different (a home run) would kill a presidential rally. If Republicans give Democrats the only tax cut they've clamored for in decades yet fail to provide fundamental and comprehensive tax reform, the GOP will be passing up the opportunity of a lifetime.
The next time a reporter asks the president to identify a mistake he has made, I hope he answers, "I made two: Creating those stupid commissions/advisory panels on Social Security and Tax Reform. I knew what needed to be done; I didn't need a bunch of technocrats and former members of Congress, now lobbyists, to tell me. Rather than providing me the best advice on the details of how to get done what we all know needs to get done, I allowed myself to become hostage to the technocrats and lobbyists. I'm done with that, and that's why I'm proposing that Congress hitch up its britches and get to work enacting fundamental and comprehensive tax reform and simplification before I leave office."