Particularly towards the end of the campaign, Bush said he looked forward to a radical revamp of the federal tax system. He refused to tell anyone what he’d actually do with the tax code — we were just supposed to vote for him and take his word for it — but possibilities included a flat tax and a national sales tax.
Indeed, after the election was decided, Bush immediately started rallying support for what he calls “tax simplification,” which he insists will be a “key priority” for his administration in 2005.
Naturally, Bush’s critics, seeing what his tax policies have already done to destroy fiscal sanity in Washington, are pessimistic about what the White House has in store. More surprising, however, is that opposition to sweeping “reform” of the tax code is also coming from the right.
The Senate’s top tax-writer expressed doubts Tuesday about prospects for a major overhaul of the tax code, dealing a blow to one of President Bush’s top priorities two weeks after his re-election.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said comprehensive tax reform would be “difficult” to do. “I’m not one to spend a lot of time tilting at windmills,” he said.
[…]
Grassley’s view is important because all tax bills go through his committee. In an interview with USA Today, he said Bush made a mistake by not talking about tax reform more often and more explicitly in the campaign. “I think there was a missed opportunity,” he said.
And when Bush is done trying to convince his own party’s top tax-writer, he’ll also have to work on Big Business, which isn’t fond of Bush’s vague tax agenda either.
Business groups are voicing concern that President Bush’s proposed reform of the tax code will do some of them more harm than good.
Despite a flurry of interest in a sweeping overhaul of the code, such as with a flat tax or a national sales tax, business organizations have yet to voice support for a fundamental change.
Many industries have well-established preferences built into the tax code that a broad reform effort could jeopardize.
Bush was probably hoping that his second term would be easy. Everyone would hear King George’s wishes and then jump to make him happy. It might be a little more complicated than that.