Wonkbook: Has the GOP really taken taxes off the table?By Ezra Klein
Not to steal Bill Maher’s schtick, but new rule: if you’re not willing to consider tax increases, you’re not serious about deficits. Full stop. Just as rigid pacifists aren’t credible on national defense and dogmatic Christian Scientists are rarely consulted on health-care policy, a politician who has made an ideological vow to refuse to even consider tax increases is not interested in reducing deficits -- and that’s true no matter how often they say the word “deficits.” So if Grover Norquist has really gotten ironclad assurances from both Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that they will not permit tax increases as part of a deficit deal, then the only sensible conclusion is that Boehner and McConnell are not interested in deficits.
One politician making it a priority, however, is Sen. Tom Coburn. The play that Coburn and the other “Gang of Six” members want to run is to shut down loopholes in the tax code and reform expenditures such that the code is flatter and broader and raises more money. Norquist (and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR) considers that a tax increase, and he’s technically correct -- it will mean more taxes get paid. But Coburn’s office is undeterred. “Dr. Coburn has been arguing for many years, in word and deed, that the problem is overspending, not under-taxation,” John Hart, Coburn’s communications director, told the Hill. “That said, he strongly disagrees with ATR’s belief that every distortion and corporate welfare subsidy in the tax code, such as that for ethanol, is a ‘tax cut’ that needs to be preserved. Trusting Washington to pick winners and losers in the tax code should be anathema to conservatives. ATR’s odd definition of tax purity is an argument for tax deferment, tax complexity, more spending and unsustainable borrowing.”
It’s worth noting how far the goalposts have moved on this issue: rather than courage on the conservative side denoting a willingness to straightforwardly raise taxes to reduce deficits, it’s now a willingness to argue that closing tax loopholes, reforming expenditures and ending some tax breaks should not be defined as raising taxes -- even if doing so means more revenues. This may end up being a distinction without much difference: Given that the tax code includes more than $1 trillion in these breaks and expenditures annually, it’s entirely possible that we could find serious money there and never need to raise taxes in the traditional manner. But that’d mean taking on popular policies like the mortgage-interest deduction and the deduction for employer-provided health-care insurance. Raising taxes in the traditional manner might actually prove easier. And if that’s the case -- if it’s a straightforward tax increase or no balanced budget -- will the self-styled deficit hawks in the Republican Party step up and do what we all know needs to be done?
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