While North Carolina legislators continue to work out their tax reform proposals — USA Tax, anyone? — the latest Bloomberg Businessweek documents Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Camp’s efforts to achieve a similar goal at the federal level.
The process will be tedious, which is why it’s well-suited to a low-profile journeyman like Camp. He’s fond of saying the U.S. tax code is as long as the Bible with none of the good news. After taking over Ways and Means in 2011, Camp resisted pressure within his party to do a small deal that would have helped companies bring overseas profits home. He didn’t want to give away leverage he’d need for a more ambitious rewrite with the lower rates. “His approach initially was to set a goal without any indication of how to get there,” says Michigan Representative Sander Levin, Camp’s Democratic counterpart on Ways and Means. The two men don’t agree much but show a grudging respect for one another.
To get a bill passed, leaders can create it from the top down—over sandwiches with the president or through a “blue ribbon” commission or supercommittee. (Camp sat on both the Simpson-Bowles debt reduction committee in 2010 and the failed supercommittee in 2011.) Or a chairman can take matters into his own hands and push a bill through his committee, gaining support from rank-and-file members and the public, making it awkward for leadership and the White House to ignore. Camp has opted for the latter. Instead of waiting for Boehner to negotiate a deal with the White House that would leave Camp to carry out instructions from above, he’s starting a process much like the one kids learn about in grade school. “This is not writing the bill in a leadership office and rolling it out on the floor,” says Camp. “This is about building a bill, piece by piece, from the ground up.”
