House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday evening that he plans for the chamber to pass tax reform in 2016, ahead of the presidential election, to advertise Republican ideas for voters.
While that effort likely would be stymied by the Senate and White House, Ryan acknowledged, he is open to working with Democrats on a smaller reform effort on international taxation meant to forestall the trend of corporations moving their headquarters out of the U.S.
In an appearance at a event hosted by the Wall Street Journal Tuesday, the newly installed speaker said of tax reform that “we believe we ought to show what we would do differently in specifics and lay that out to the country so we can have that kind of affirming election.”
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Ryan said he would continue the work on passing tax reform legislation he began as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over taxes.
It is necessary for the House Republican majority to pass tax reform even if it won’t become law to provide voters an alternative to Democrats’ plans, Ryan said.
“What matters is that we put out there a specific agenda and ideas for how we would do things,” the Wisconsin Republican told interviewer Paul Gigot, head of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page. Ryan added that “we don’t want a personality contest, we want a mandate election.”
Reforming the tax code is a politically dangerous goal. To lower tax rates, Congress must eliminate the specific tax deductions, credits and preferences prized by individual industries and groups.
When Ryan’s predecessor at the Ways and Means Committee, Dave Camp of Michigan, rolled out a reform draft plan in 2013, it was met with resistance from numerous business groups and failed to gain traction in the House.
Ryan, however, suggested that the party has moved further toward embracing tax reform. Almost all of the large GOP presidential field, he said, have good tax reform plans. “We’re over the sweet spot I would say as a party,” he remarked.
Before 2017, Ryan said, he will aim to implement international corporate tax reform with Democrats. While he acknowledged that the Obama administration might not cooperate, he said that he’s still in talks with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., about a reform that would update the corporate tax code to remove the incentives companies face to move their headquarters out of the U.S.
“We are losing our competitiveness,” Ryan said of the current system, which has resulted in U.S. corporations keeping an estimated $2 trillion-plus in overseas profits outside the country to avoid U.S. taxation. “We are losing our seed corn.”
