A new GOP tax plan?

Robert Novak:

Conservative Republicans have been back on their heels all year while the majority Democrats in Congress offered liberal initiatives. But this week, reform-minded conservatives intend to introduce the most far-reaching tax plan since Jack Kemp's three decades ago. It would establish a radically simplified, flatter tax for an estimated 90 to 95 percent of income-tax filers.

Those taxpayers presumably would accept this offer: Give up all your current deductions, and your annual earnings up to $100,000 would be taxed at 10 percent, with a 25 percent rate on everything above that. But that is not all. The bill would repeal the hated alternative minimum tax (AMT), erasing $840 billion in revenue over the next 10 years. Government would have to get leaner.

This is too daring for the Bush administration's Treasury Department or the House Republican leadership. The Taxpayer Choice Act, to be introduced today, is sponsored by three influential junior members. They are headed by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, a five-term lawmaker and the ranking Republican on the Budget Committee. But Kemp was also a lone wolf when he introduced his across-the-board tax cut, which became the heart of President Ronald Reagan's economic program.

Ryan's reform was triggered by the runaway AMT, which originally was intended to catch rich tax avoiders but keeps spreading to ensnare ordinary people. It would hit 23 million additional families this year alone. Congress has restricted the AMT on a piecemeal basis, and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is pushing for a "patch" that would limit its grasp to 4 million upper-bracket families.

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Ryan would seize the moment to push a tax choice plan that has been percolating for years. Ryan added as co-sponsors two House Republican colleagues thinking along the same lines: Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, a third-termer who is chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee, and Rep. John Campbell of California, in his first full term.

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Hensarling is a good guy and a coming leader in the House. It is also a budget hawk. The plan is likely to have some political appeal in next year's election, especially when contrasted with the Democrats agenda of raising taxes significantly to implement their greater control over peoples lives and money. That is the contrast the GOP needs make--freedom vs. control freaks.