Next month will be jobs month in Washington. President Obama is scheduled to give a speech on job creation and House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., yesterday unveiled a GOP legislative agenda on jobs. In the meantime, House conservatives in the Republican Study Committee are in the process of gathering ideas for a jobs proposal of their own.
Last week, RSC chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to members of the group asking for suggestions.
“We’re still in the process of getting feedback from members,” RSC spokesman Brian Straessle said.
Generally speaking, he said he expected that the approach would be similar to what Republicans have been pushing all year: cutting regulatory red tape, reforming the tax code, and boosting domestic energy production.
Asked if the RSC was likely to go further than Cantor in pressing for broader tax simplification, Straessle said, “It’s certainly possible. It really depends on what the appetite is among the membership. But that’s something that’s been discussed by House Republicans and conservatives throughout the year. If that’s where the input takes us, then absolutely.”
However, he said that any tax simplification would be more likely to resemble 1986-style reforms in which deductions and loopholes are eliminated in exchange for lower rates and fewer brackets, than something more fundamental, such as a flat tax or Fair Tax.
While there are members who are supporters of such fundamental reforms, Straessle said, “The discussion has tended to stay more along the lines of 1986, just by virtue of the fact that there isn’t a consensus among those who support a more comprehensive approach to revamping the whole tax code.”
On the spending front, he said the RSC was also soliciting feedback on whether they should press for further cuts to the fiscal 2012 budget, beyond those negotiated in the debt limit deal. Because Senate Democrats have not passed a 2012 budget, and don’t approve of the House-passed budget, the government faces the prospect of a shutdown after the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 unless both parties agree on a spending measure before then.
