Rep. Dave Camp on his tax reform plan
Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has worked on his 979-page tax reform proposal for about three years. And yet, it may not actually go much further, at least right now.
On the need for tax reform
“We can’t wait. We can’t settle for an economy that isn’t growing. We can’t settle for 2 percent growth. We can’t settle for the fact that we don’t create enough jobs for kids to get out and get on their own, that they’re having to live with their parents. We’ve had median incomes declining for the last several years.”
On the idea behind his reform proposal
“The top tax rate is 39.6 percent. For businesses it’s 35. Absolutely, reducing those rates is very important, it also simplifies our code. Instead of 7 brackets, it’s down to 2. What we do is take a reform of the code and the dollars that come from that reform, and plow that back into lowering tax rates.”
On what his bill addresses
“I’ve released a detailed bill today. There are 228 provisions that we eliminate in the tax code. One of the areas we address is how people save for their retirements through IRAs. About 5 percent of employees contribute $8,000 to their IRA. To those who do that, anything over $8,000 has to go to a Roth IRA. That is one of the changes we make that helps us lower rates.”
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