Floating a mortgage-interest trial balloon
Among the many services performed by blue-ribbon panels is the essential political sacrifice of the deniable trial balloon.
“I’ve already testified three times, I don’t know the chairman!”
An elected official pondering the political calculus of an action can always convene a gaggle of wise heads, solicit their views, and then observe the political fallout from a safe distance.
“Gentlemen, thanks for your recommendation, which I’m taking under advisement.”
For instance, if one wishes to get rid of the noxious and rapidly expanding Alternative Minimum Tax, without dramatically increasing the budget deficit (beyond the impressive heights it has achieved already), one might approach, however tentatively, the holiest of real estate holies: the deductibility of home mortgage interest. Now comes a Presidential panel, thinking about the unthinkable, and obligingly floats the most deniable of trial balloons:
A presidential advisory panel agreed that changes in the federal income tax should limit popular tax breaks for both homeownership and employer-provided health insurance.
Up they go, into the political troposphere
The decisions, made in a preliminary fashion yesterday [October 11, 2005 — Ed.] by the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, are likely to be opposed by the housing industry and other business interests.
Gee, do you think so? Whose ox is being gored?
The bipartisan panel was created in January by President Bush to examine large-scale alternatives to the tax code. It plans to make its final suggestions on Nov. 1. The president is not obliged to accept — or to advance — any of them.
A double trial balloon: not only is the President insulated, so are the commissioners!
Meeting in
‘Might be’ is such a lovely conditional-tense verb, suitable for the lightest of balloons.
“What do you mean, you’re rejecting our recommendations???”
Why dare these men to brave the political tempest? In service of a larger Presidential goal:
One part of the income tax that the panel hopes to reduce or eliminate is the alternative minimum tax. This provision, which was initially added to the code as a way to make sure that millionaires did not avoid paying taxes, is now beginning to hit upper-middle-income Americans as well.
Repeal of the alternative minimum tax would cost hundreds of billions of dollars over a number of years. The limits on the housing and health care provisions would help pay that cost, the panel said.
Just remember, the motto of every blue-ribbon panel is, “Morituri te salutamus“
“Yes, of course we’re ready to meet with the lobbyists.”
