GOP tax-writer could settle on tax reform process by August

Still, Camp also said there was no timeline yet for when his committee would consider a measure extending the Bush tax cuts or a fast-track for tax reform. 

{mosads}Boehner has said that the House would vote on extending Bush-era tax rates, which expire at year’s end, and implementing the expedited process for tax reform before November’s elections. In addition to the Bush tax cuts, Congress faces a variety of other year-end issues that includes automatic spending cuts that rose from the failure of the supercommittee.

The discussion over tax reform could also get linked to reforming Medicare and other entitlement programs, as it was last year when Boehner and President Obama fell short of hashing out a grand deficit bargain. 

Congressional Democrats and the White House have said they will only support continuing the current tax rates for the middle class, making it unlikely that the House plan will become law this year.

Top Democratic tax-writers like Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the Finance Committee chairman, also have said they suspect that Boehner’s proposal was a political ploy. But Camp, who has worked closely with Baucus on tax reform issues, urged Democrats on Thursday to get behind the plan. 

“Doing so would send a clear, strong signal that we need send to markets, to employers, to families that Washington is serious about reforming our tax code, to get us on a path to sustained, robust economic growth,” the Michigan Republican said at the seminar hosted by Federal Policy Group and Baker and Hostetler. 

Camp and other top Republicans have been meeting with the GOP rank-and-file on tax issues, and the current plan would allow the House GOP to push the tax reform ball forward without delving too deeply into the details.

House Republicans have already passed a framework for reform in their most recent budget, which would collapse the individual tax system into two brackets and set top rates for both individuals and businesses at 25 percent. 

Like other members of his conference, Camp has also said that he doesn’t believe the Bush-era tax cuts need to be offset, something that has drawn howls from Democrats for its deficit impact. Democrats have also hammered the GOP for not being more specific on what tax incentives it would eliminate to pay for their lower rates.

Republicans have said that extending the Bush tax cuts will help further set the stage for a tax revamp, but Camp also said that he would proceed methodically on reform.

The Michigan Republican released a draft plan last year that would drastically limit the amount of taxes multinationals pay on profits made overseas, and Camp said he would continue talking with all sorts of stakeholders in the months to come. 

“Clearly, progress has been made on this issue,” he said. “It isn’t just, as this old Dusty Springfield song said: We aren’t just sitting around ‘wishing and hoping and thinking and praying.’ ”