Counting on true tax reform? Odds slim to none

Ihate to sound like a broken record. Even if that record is a good one, it can become too much of a good thing.

When I was in college, Pure Prairie League had a popular song called “Amie.” A guy on my dorm floor was “dumped” by a girl named Amie. His response was to play “Amie” several times a day. Every day. All year.

When I use Pandora to find old-guy songs for me it often selects “Amie.” I have to skip the song. As proof that our lives are interconnected, one guy getting dumped by a girl decades ago causes another to avoid a song that’s really pretty good.

Over the past six months I have, on several occasions, expressed extreme skepticism that tax reform would happen. Tax cuts maybe, tax reform no.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a name that causes spell checker to explode, keeps moving back the date that we will definitely have tax reform. His timetable is not really the issue; the process is the issue.

A small group of people is apparently working on tax reform. We really don’t know because it’s a small group. That group will, I suppose, spring the plan on the Republican House and Senate for approval at some time.

Democrats will not be consulted or even invited to the springing ceremony. Who needs them when Republicans call out “all aboard?”

If that sounds familiar, that’s the health care plan. We all know what happened to the health care plan.

We have been told since last November that tax reform will happen because the Republicans control both houses of Congress and the executive branch.

There’s some logic in such a prediction of legislative success. But at a minimum, such a plan requires that the Republicans craft a plan and get Republican buy-in.

Instead, even Republican members of Congress have been excluded from broad participation in health care or tax reform. Instead a star chamber, and I use that in a most pejorative way, springs a plan on its own party.

Sen. John McCain has forcefully argued for a return to “regular order.” He means not just bipartisan approaches to legislation, but also that regular committees work on legislation.

McCain may be the guy calling for regular order, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that Republicans in general want to be involved in the drafting process.

Republicans, and even Democrats, are causing the president to borrow from “Amie:”

I can see why you think you belong to me I never tried to make you think or let you see one thing for yourself but now you’re off with someone else and I’m alone you see I thought that I might keep you for my own

Maybe a return to regular order, using committees and both parties, could cause even me to welcome the most significant line from “Amie,” as the legislative branch says to the executive branch, I think I could stay with you for a while maybe longer if I do.

Just like “Amie,” I’ve heard too many times how we will realize a reformed tax system. But the guy who’s saying those words needs to get off his bed, out of his room and actually interact with others who can help him.

I hope Ned (his real name, what are the odds he’ll ever see this column) stopped playing a broken record and found happiness in life.

And I’m sure you hope I stop playing my own broken record — tax reform won’t happen, tax reform won’t happen, blah, blah, blah.

But it won’t. Not if we continue to avoid what we found worked in 1986. Just to review: (1) studies by real tax policy experts, not by those trying to please one base or another; (2) bipartisan buyin, which will require compromise; (3) approval votes by both parties.

Regular order. Instead what we are doing is neither regular nor orderly. No one will get everything they want from regular order, but a compromise reform bill can get enough votes to make a bill a law.

You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.