To help get around the fact that the president has embraced “tax reform” without mentioning a single detail about his approach, Bush is prepared to move forward on creating a “bi-partisan commission” to study the issue.
President Bush’s bipartisan commission on tax reform, whose members will be named early next year, is expected to work quickly to develop a reform proposal before the end of 2005, tax lobbyists and congressional sources said.
Bush has identified tax reform as a key priority for his second term, and many predict that if such an ambitious effort is to succeed it must gain congressional momentum well before the midterm elections in 2006.
Naturally, this is a scam. When Bush decided to privatize Social Security, he created a “bipartisan commission” to offer him the solution he had already decided on. Indeed, commission members, many of whom foolishly believed they were being asked to do real work, quickly discovered that it was the White House that controlled the panel’s agenda and told it what to do. This occurred despite the fact that Bush aides carefully chose commission members who already agreed with president on the issue.
This time, however, the White House is prepared to be even less open to divergent ideas. Leading names for the panel include Steve Forbes, former Sen. Phil Gramm, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Any chance these three will help Karl Rove create a fair and equitable approach to changing the tax code, which will ultimately reward work instead of wealth? I don’t think so either.