Ryan’s tax reforms cost more than all his spending cuts combined

[MaxShimba]

Ryan's tax reforms cost more than all his spending cuts combined
by Ezra Klein

So how will he pay for his much, much lower rates? Well, he doesn’t say. In fact, he doesn’t even begin to say. His budget doesn’t name even one tax deduction, exclusion, credit, or loophole that will be closed. All he says is that he will pay for his lower rates, or at least the House Ways and Means Committee, which is in charge of writing any tax reform bill, will pay for them.

But he doesn’t say that they’ll pay for them while keeping the tax code as progressive as it is today.

Ryan’s budget is very clear in its instructions to the House Ways and Means Committee. They can only submit a tax reform bill that “simplifies the tax code to make it fairer to American families and businesses and reduces the amount of time and resources necessary to comply with tax laws,” “substantially lowers tax rates for individuals,” “repeals the alternative minimum tax,” “reduces the corporate rate to 25 percent,” “transitions the tax code to a more competitive system of international taxation,” and is “revenue-neutral”.

Nowhere does it say the final bill needs to retain the current progressivity of the code.

That’s likely because it would be impossible to enact the kind of reform Ryan’s previewing while retaining the progressivity of the tax code.