The top lawmakers on the House and Senate tax writing panels warned the Obama administration Wednesday to forgo taking executive action on taxes.
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called on the president to work with Congress to reform the system. The two Republicans warned that unilateral action on taxes would be “a mistake, both constitutionally and politically.”
Hatch, of Utah, and Ryan, of Wisconsin, sent the letter to Lew after the White House signaled Obama is interested in eliminating some tax breaks through executive action, particularly those that benefit large corporations and the wealthy.
“The President has asked his team to examine the array of executive authorities that are available to him to try to make progress on his goal,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said at a press conference earlier this month, adding, “the president is very interested in this avenue generally.”
Republicans are hoping to reform at least part of the corporate tax code in the coming year and are relying on cooperation from the White House in order to strike a deal that can become law.
The GOP would like to lower corporate tax rates in a deal that could include ending some tax benefits. Obama has proposed using the revenue expected to flow from ending some tax cuts in order to pay for infrastructure rather than to lower corporate rates.
Ryan and Hatch, both Republicans, warned Obama that acting unilaterally could hurt the economy and thwart any chance of a lasting deal that could be achieved with Congress.
“It would be a significant setback if you decided to interpret or implement tax laws based on your political preference rather than the consensus that the tax reform process could produce,” Hatch and Ryan wrote to Lew. “It would also be significantly damaging to the economy to further the idea that, rather than working with stable rules of the road, tax and other laws will hereafter evolve according to the uncertain path of unilateral executive decisions followed by controversy, challenges and mistrust.”
