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It's not wasting their time, it's keeping them out of the way.

November 11, 2009

The Obama tax reform commission looks like it will be even more futile than is typical for these things, reports TaxVox:

Despite once-high expectations, it is likely to be a waste of everyone’s time.

Those "high expectations" were by no means universal.

The Board (the PERAB in Washington-speak) is hardly a bunch of economic lightweights. Chaired by ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, its members include economist Marty Feldstein, GE CEO Jeff Immelt, venture capitalist John Doerr, former CEA chair Laura Tyson, and other stars of Wall Street, Main Street, academia, and labor. Its chief economist is Austan Goolsbee, a top-notch researcher who has had close ties to President Obama for years.

Yet the reform panel—technically a PERAB subcommittee-- is going to produce…a mouse. From its earliest days, the group was forced to work under impossible constraints. Chief among them: Obama’s insistence that no one earning less than $250,000 should pay higher taxes. Exempting more than 95 percent of families and individuals from tax hikes of any kind essentially shut the door on any serious discussion of reform, which inevitably creates winners and, yes, losers.

So what are they doing?

A few months ago, we were told it would produce a document that looks something like CBO’s revenue options—listing a narrow range of ideas without actually endorsing any of them.

Now, we learn, the panel may not even do that. Rather, it will merely enumerate possible ways to simplify, improve enforcement, or restructure the corporate tax without even hinting which the Administration favors and which it does not. Other than serving the need to produce something, I can’t imagine why they are even bothering.

I have a theory. These panelists are real economists, and they have advice the President doesn't care to hear. They were fine window dressing during the campaign, but they're no longer useful. Mr. Volker has been famously ignored since the election. Mr. Goolsbee, as a real economist, argued in the White House that the government takeover of GM was unwise. The otherwise useless tax reform panel is a handy cone of silence for troublesome voices.