Congress Achieves the Impossible on Tax Reform

In their rush to pass something, anything, that they can call "tax reform," congressional Republicans have achieved the impossible: They have made an awful plan even worse.

The first thing to note about the bill the Senate passed early Saturday is that it is not, by any reasonable definition of the term, tax reform. The elements of a smart reform are no secret. It would lower rates, broaden the base by closing loopholes, eliminate distorting provisions and seek to distribute the burden as fairly as possible. Done well, it could improve the country’s longer-term growth prospects by offering greater simplicity and certainty, and it needn’t unduly increase the federal deficit or count on added growth to pay for cuts.