Wonk: Tax Reform Will Be GOP’s Next Nightmare

After “a stinging defeat” in their bid to replace ObamaCare, “President Trump and Republicans are looking for an easy win,” notes The Atantic’s Derek Thompson. But “tax reform is the opposite of easy.” Democrats aren’t likely to vote for GOP plans for a large tax cut, so Republicans will have to rely on budget “reconciliation rules,” which require only 51 votes instead of the 60 needed to break a Senate filibuster. But they also require “offsets” to prevent boosting the deficit, and that spells trouble. House Speaker Paul Ryan “would scrap most itemized deductions,” Thompson notes. But removing even one is “like sending the equivalent of a bat signal into the Washington sky, all but ensuring that lobbyists for that particular cause swarm Capitol Hill.” It’s been 30 years since the last comprehensive tax reform, he notes, and “there’s little mystery” why: “Tax reform is a nightmare.”