Alfonse D'Amato

Reaching for a consensus on tax reform, and more

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President Trump may have made waves again with his decision to work with Democrats on a bipartisan agreement to raise the federal debt limit and provide hurricane relief for Texas, but in so doing, he may have opened a channel to keep afloat other important issues that are in danger of sinking in Washington’s partisan quagmire.
So far, the GOP-led Congress hasn’t even been able to agree with itself on key issues like health care, taxes and immigration, to name just a few. Precious months have been wasted on ideological battles while health insurance premiums have soared, tax reform has languished and immigration problems have festered.
Maybe it’s time for the president and the GOP to seek to govern based on the issues on which Trump ran and won: rebuilding America’s economy and restoring American competitiveness across the globe. It might not hurt to start by recognizing that the millions who didn’t vote for him are still entitled to a voice in Washington. Along with all Americans, they would benefit from a growing economy that addresses the needs of the long-neglected working middle class. Bipartisanship shouldn’t be the dirty word that today’s politicians have turned it into.
Even with all the circular-firing-squad behavior in D.C., the economy continues to grow at a pretty good clip, buoyed by stronger consumer confidence in our economic future. But if we can spur growth by another point or two, the benefits could be enormous. Right now, that means that Congress and the president need to hunker down in serious negotiations on meaningful tax reform. The strange thing is that members of Congress in both parties know the short list for kick-starting tax overhaul, at the top of which is bringing our corporate tax rates in line with the rest of the world. A corporate tax rate of 20 percent tied to incentives for repatriating trillions of tax dollars currently stashed in overseas tax havens could help fund the infrastructure program that both Republicans and Democrats say they want.
And both political parties know there are some obvious tax dodges that should be eliminated to help pay for projects like rebuilding from the damage just inflicted by hurricanes Harvey and Irma. One of the worst of these dodges is the so-called “carried interest” shelter. In plain English, it’s used by billionaire hedge fund managers to pay a lower rate of taxes than they would otherwise. Eliminating it would mean they would pay taxes at the same rates as millions of Americans who don’t have such sophisticated tax shelters to hide behind.

If Congress and the president could come to terms on bipartisan tax reform, it just might set the stage for tackling some other seemingly unsolvable problems the country faces. As polarizing as the immigration debate has become, let’s at least find a way to absorb and accept the youngest immigrants who came here as children and now have the potential to grow into productive and patriotic citizens. In exchange for letting them stay, let’s finally beef up our border security to make sure that another immigrant wave doesn’t overwhelm us. It might not take building a wall along the entire Mexico border, but it will take stronger detection and interdiction measures that are available to us if we’ll just use them.
Finally, since Congress got off on the wrong foot on health care, let’s calm down and address the soaring cost of that insurance with some common-sense approaches that are currently being developed by cooler heads in Congress. Shoring up our health insurance markets to hold premiums down is what practically every elected leader in Washington says he or she wants to do. And some new ideas, like health savings accounts and the interstate sale of health insurance, are worth a try.
If Washington can help the economy grow, reform the tax code, stabilize the health care system and finally — finally — address our longstanding immigration challenges, maybe Americans will begin to hold our leaders in higher regard than they do now.

Al D’Amato, a former U.S. senator from New York, is the founder of Park Strategies LLC, a public policy and business development firm. Comments about this column? ADAmato@liherald.com.