Republican members of the House and Senate turned their attention to the politics of changing the tax code and the lessons of President Bush's campaign on Saturday, the second day of a party retreat here.
Party leaders and White House officials gathered at the Greenbrier resort also discussed a new rhetorical twist in their campaign to remake Social Security. In meetings on Friday, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Representative Bill Thomas of California, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, discussed redirecting public attention on 2008 as an imminent danger point for the Social Security trust fund because baby boomers will begin retiring, even though even the most dire analyses say the fund will remain solvent for a decade or longer after that.
House Republicans heard a report on Saturday from the National Republican Congressional Committee on the potential politics of changing the tax system, saying that there was broad support for "simplification," but not for a flat tax, a national sales tax or abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, people familiar with the report said.
Members also discussed potential opposition to the alternative minimum tax, congressional aides said. Relatively few Americans are wealthy enough to pay the tax at present, but the House Republicans emphasized that the effects of inflation would gradually mean that the tax would apply to more people, and called it a "ticking tax time bomb," aides said.
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