A Last-Minute Free-for-All Is No Way to Do Tax Reform

Under pressure of successive self-imposed deadlines, with a befuddled country looking on, Democrats in Congress continue to wrestle with a supposedly transformative spending plan and the means to pay for it. On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced yet another version of what this might involve. The eventual outcome is still anybody’s guess.

There’s a reason for the protracted muddle. Democrats set out with two overriding priorities. First, their spending commitments must be huge. (Exactly how and where the money would be spent was less important.) Second, the vast majority of Americans should face no tax increase. That basic contradiction explains much of the subsequent confusion. Somehow, the gap between ends and means needed to be scaled down — but without owning up to diminished ambition and without asking anybody but the very rich to pay more tax.