Chairman of House Tax-Writing Committee Reported to Push Ryan Plan as Tax Reform

Republican Congressman Dave Camp of Michigan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, reportedly told members of his committee on Wednesday that he would propose a tax reform based on the framework spelled out in the House budget resolution – also known as the “Ryan plan,” because it was developed by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.

The Ryan plan calls for Congress to enact some very specific tax cuts and offset their costs by eliminating or limiting tax expenditures that are left unspecified. A report from Citizens for Tax Justice concludes that no matter how the details of the plan are filled in, people who make over $500,000 would pay tens of thousands of dollars less each year and people who make over $1 million would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars less each year, than they do under the current tax system.

The Ryan plan calls on Congress to replace the current progressive rates in the federal personal income tax with just two rates, 10 percent and 25 percent, eliminate the AMT, reduce the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent, and enact other tax cuts. It calls on Congress to offset the costs of these tax cuts by eliminating or reducing tax expenditures which are left unspecified, although it is fairly clear that tax breaks for investment income (most of which goes to the richest one percent of Americans) would not be limited in any way.

CTJ’s report found that even if high-income Americans had to give up all the tax expenditures that could be eliminated under the Ryan plan, they would still benefit because the rate reductions under the plan are so significant. If Congress fills in the details of the plan in a way that makes it “revenue-neutral,” which Camp proposes, that can only mean that low- and middle-income people must pay more to make up the difference.

According to The Hill, on Wednesday Camp “told Ways and Means Committee members that he planned to push a framework similar to the tax revamp that was passed in the House GOP budget this year. That plan collapsed the current seven individual tax brackets into two — a 10 percent and a 25 percent bracket — while scrapping the Alternative Minimum Tax. Corporations’ top rate would drop from 35 percent to 25 percent under the plan, which would neither raise nor reduce revenue to the Treasury.”

Congressman Camp and Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, have recently toured the country, making appearances in Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and suburban New Jersey to promote an overhaul of the tax code even though they do not say what that overhaul would look like during their appearances. As the Republican and Democratic chairmen of the two tax-writing committees, they argue that Congress can enact a bipartisan tax reform. However, the Ryan budget plan, which Camp says will be the basis of his proposal, failed to receive a single Democratic vote when versions of it were approved by the House in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

The Hill also reported that Camp planned to mark up a bill before Congress acts to raise the debt ceiling, and that tax reform could be linked to legislation to raise the debt ceiling. The administration has already announced that it will not negotiate over the debt ceiling, and that instead Congress must pass a “clean” bill to raise the ceiling to prevent a default on U.S. debt obligations and the economic tailspin that would result.