The President, Congress, and Tax Reform: Patterns over Three Decades

Abstract

Both Congress and the president have taken the lead on tax reform at different times in the more than three decades between full-scale revisions of the tax code in 1954 and 1986. This article traces four forces that shaped executive-legislative relations on tax policy during that period: partisan politics, economics, public opinion, and policy experts and entrepreneurs. It concludes that Congress's ability to lead is greatest when economic forces—inflation, recession, and budget deficits—help push tax reform onto the agenda. Presidents retain a natural advantage in agenda setting, however; they are able to put tax reform on the agenda when pressures for reform are weak, and sometimes they can keep it off when pressures are stronger. Tax-policy experts can have a major impact when political and economic forces provide an opening and when skilled entrepreneurs forge links between their prescriptions and political needs and concerns.