On Thursday, January 29th the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee (hereinafter “the Committee”) issued a letter to the Republican Chairman, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, outlining their main principles for tax reform that emphasizes first that the tax reform process should go through “regular order” and not the budget reconciliation process. “Reconciliation imposes tight restrictions, such as the Byrd rule, that could inhibit our work by forcing us to focus on procedural intricacies rather than good tax policy,” said the Senate Democrats in their letter. “Using, or even the implicit threat of using, the reconciliation process for tax reform would destroy the necessary bipartisanship that made the 1986 reform effort so successful.” Other principles cited by Senate Democrats include making reforms more progressive than current tax policy, and reducing the Read More