Republicans put tax reform squarely onto the agenda of the US Congress’ deficit-cutting “super committee” on Thursday at its first meeting, with members also stressing the need to boost job creation.
As union-backed protesters in a hallway outside briefly interrupted the meeting with chants of “What do we want? Jobs! When do we want them? Now!” some Republicans urged overhauling the clunky tax code, which has not been revamped in 25 years.
“Comprehensive tax reform would spur economic growth and job creation and should be part of our discussions,” said Republican US Representative Dave Camp, who also chairs the tax-writing US House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.
Republicans and Democrats are likely to sharply differ on what comprehensive tax reform should entail, but Camp’s remarks raised expectations that taxes will at least be on the table. That was not necessarily the case just a few weeks ago.
Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Republican co-chairman of the special panel, also called for broad tax reform by a committee charged with finding US$1.2 trillion in new deficit reductions.
“I hope we are able to bring about pro-growth tax reform in order to bring about more revenues,” Hensarling said.
In the past, Camp had said it would be too difficult to do major tax reform as part of the emergency deficit-reduction efforts facing the super committee. Instead, he preferred that his Ways and Means Committee handle that complicated task.
Camp’s US Senate counterpart, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, a Democratic member of the super committee, agreed that comprehensive tax reform “should be on the table.”
However, Baucus said the super committee’s “short period [for working out a deficit deal] just makes it difficult.”
Facing a deadline of Nov. 23 to find at least US$1.2 trillion in budget savings over the next 10 years, the panel will have less than 10 weeks to do its work. Reforming the tax code is widely seen as a job taking much more time than that, though many of the pieces of a potential package have already been offered up in the past year by other special panels.
Washington’s last deficit-cutting effort, which led to the super committee’s creation, culminated last month with US$917 billion in spending cuts and an increase in the US debt ceiling that averted a government shutdown. It was the result of a bitter fight between Republicans and Democrats.
Throughout the debt ceiling struggle, Republicans refused to consider any tax increases as part of the solution to taming annual federal budget deficits of more than US$1 trillion.
The first meeting of the super committee brought no such lines in the sand by Republicans. They were mum, however, on whether they could go along with some targeted tax hikes that Democrats want, likely aimed at wealthy people and companies.
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