Congress at work

So the taxpayers can reap the benefits

IN ORDER to simplify this country’s tax structure, it may take a lot of complex legislation. Five hundred pages of it at last and still continuing count. Legislation, like life, is just full of paradoxes.

The ultimate aim is to enable Mr./ Ms. American Taxpayer to file a federal tax return no bigger than a postcard. But to boil down the voluminous tax laws of the federal government to so simple and welcome a form is proving a complex undertaking. Yet Republicans set out to do just that— and at press time, glory be, they were succeeding.

Maybe, just maybe, these Republicans can govern the country after all, even if not one Democrat in either the House nor Senate would help. Who says Congress can’t give the country a tax system both fair and understandable? At least when the majority party is determined, and only loses a few holdouts among its own.

The loyal opposition is betting against it all. Jon Tester, who is Montana’s Democratic gift to the U.S. Senate, made a video in which he displayed just one page full of handwritten scrawls in the margins. His object: to show what a mess these danged Republicans are making of tax reform. “This is unbelievable,” he declared, for “we’re doing a massive tax reform on an absolutely incredible timeline. This is going to affect everybody in the country.” And about time, too.

Claire McCaskill, the Democratic senator from Missouri, sounded shocked—shocked!—that Republicans had not let her in on the last-minute changes they were making to the first comprehensive tax reform since Ronald Reagan’s time, which set the stage for years of prosperity. Senator McCaskill took loud umbrage over her having to find out about all these proposed changes not from the Republican opposition but assorted lobbyists. So what? Did Macy’s tell Gimbels what it was up to?

What the country is witnessing here is but politics as usual, as lawmakers take advantage of this opportunity to serve their constituents’ interests before it’s too late. And reduce the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, among other things, which would make the United States more competitive with other countries, and hopefully encourage more American companies to keep their operations here, instead of offshore. Which would also mean more people would be employed in the United States. Workers—and owners—unite! And watch as lower tax rates for most Americans provide the tide that lifts all boats.

Here’s hoping the country has had its fill of nostrums, slogans, and all the rest of such modtalk and will finally get down to business. And the business of the country remains business (Coolidge, C.).

LET IT be noted that Senator McCaskill also took exception to a proposed exemption for university endowments that she claimed was included in the bill only to benefit Hillsdale College, the liberal arts college that has steadfastly refused to accept federal money. Among the school’s more prominent backers is the secretary of education, Betsy DeVos, and Pennsylvania’s GOP senator, Pat Toomey. In his response to the lady’s accusation, Senator Toomey noted that any school that rejected federal funds the way Hillsdale has done would be just as eligible for the tax exemption. Case closed, or should have been. The last thing we saw in the papers, the exemption was taken out of the bill.

All this partisan byplay aside, the essence of the Republican tax reform remains a provision to lower the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent and lower tax rates both for families and individuals until 2025. Yes, the bill as written and rewritten would subject fewer Americans to the death tax, aka the estate tax, that is assessed against sizable inheritances. Once again, the politics of practical compromise has taken precedent over the latest shibboleths—an overdue step back from the politics of ideology.