The case for tax reform

Reviving an Obama-era proposal that's better suited for today's economy

Public policy discussions during Barack Obama’s presidency featured a lot of arguments about tax reform. But like a lot of ideas in the mix during Obama-era fiscal debates, tax reform didn’t make much sense under the prevailing economic conditions.

It re-emerged during the Trump era but didn’t get a ton of attention — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act debate featured a lot of moving pieces, and public policy was not generally the focus of the media covering Trump’s presidency.

But the basic Obama-vintage version of the argument, that we should come up with a means of raising revenue that Republicans might find acceptable, actually does make a lot of sense in today’s political and economic circumstances, which are almost exactly the reverse of those under Obama. Today we have low unemployment, and while I would not exactly call the current interest rate climate “high,” it’s certainly not ultra-low — and rates are rising. We need to find ways to drain the economy of demand that ideally don’t cr…