Taxes and Budget Balancing

Ezra Klein:

Not to steal Bill Maher’s schtick, but new rule: if you’re not willing to consider tax increases, you’re not serious about deficits. Full stop. Just as rigid pacifists aren’t credible on national defense and dogmatic Christian Scientists are rarely consulted on health-care policy, a politician who has made an ideological vow to refuse to even consider tax increases is not interested in reducing deficits -- and that’s true no matter how often they say the word “deficits.” So if Grover Norquist has really gotten ironclad assurances from both Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell that they will not permit tax increases as part of a deficit deal, then the only sensible conclusion is that Boehner and McConnell are not interested in deficits.

One politician making it a priority, however, is Sen. Tom Coburn. The play that Coburn and the other “Gang of Six” members want to run is to shut down loopholes in the tax code and reform expenditures such that the code is flatter and broader and raises more money. Norquist (and his organization, Americans for Tax Reform, or ATR) considers that a tax increase, and he’s technically correct -- it will mean more taxes get paid. But Coburn’s office is undeterred. “Dr. Coburn has been arguing for many years, in word and deed, that the problem is overspending, not under-taxation,” John Hart, Coburn’s communications director, told the Hill. “That said, he strongly disagrees with ATR’s belief that every distortion and corporate welfare subsidy in the tax code, such as that for ethanol, is a ‘tax cut’ that needs to be preserved. Trusting Washington to pick winners and losers in the tax code should be anathema to conservatives. ATR’s odd definition of tax purity is an argument for tax deferment, tax complexity, more spending and unsustainable borrowing.”

I never thought I would say this, but hey, way to take a stand, Tom Coburn.  Bet I don't say that very often.