House Republicans started the tax reform effort requested by House Speaker Paul Ryan Wednesday afternoon, meeting for the first time to discuss overhauling the tax system and releasing a mission statement.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, the Texan fresh off a primary victory Tuesday night, heads the task force on tax reform and released a list of principles and goals. Ryan, who was the committee’s chairman before becoming House speaker, said last weekend that tax reform is a “top, top goal” for him.
The mission statement released Wednesday is a restatement of many long-standing Republican aims. The purpose of the effort is to “create jobs, grow the economy and raise wages by reducing rates, removing special interest carve-outs, and making our broken tax code simpler and fairer.”
Among the points of interest in the statement of principles is that Republicans want people earning similar incomes to face similar taxes. They also want to avoid raising taxes on any tax group, a plank that could rule out the tax increases on low-income earners proposed by some GOP presidential candidates.
Furthermore, the mission statement ruled out raising taxes to pay down the federal debt, stating that debt reduction should come from spending cuts.
In a speech in Washington last week, Brady added more detail to his own view of the revenue goals of tax reform. He said the aim should be tax reform that does not lose revenue after taking into account the faster growth that might result from lowering tax rates and removing distortions from the tax code. In that goal, Brady differs from GOP presidential candidates Donald Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who have offered plans that outside estimates suggest would lose trillions of dollars even after factoring in the revenue feedback from faster economic growth.
Ryan set up a series of task forces to spell out for the country where House Republicans stood and to earn a mandate for passing reforms in 2017, after the November elections.
