Tax Code Reform

One story we have ignored for the last few days – new efforts to reform the tax code. This time around the reform minded are two senators, Max Baucus and Orrin Hatch, a Democrat and Republican respectively. I applaud their efforts. Goodness knows converting to a flat tax – squeezing out all the special gimmicks and breaks – would go a long way to setting this country on the right track.

But I have to tell you, I’m just a little jaded at this point. We’ve been here before with nothing to show for it. You remember the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform? Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson and their commission spent a year drafting a plan for bringing this country to fiscal solvency. The response? A big shrug from the White House which appointed them. Already Baucus and Hatch are being told to confine their ideas to corporate taxes.

Look, we will cover any serious effort to bring this country to some sort of fiscal sanity. But when it gets serious.  And, we may have a long time to go until that happens.