Rep. Camp to sell tax reform at GOP retreat

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) will seek to revive flagging hopes for tax reform at a GOP conference retreat later this month.

{mosads}Camp and other GOP tax writers are seeking to tap into the desire by some conservatives to press ahead with Republican policy priorities this year, instead of the more play-it-safe approach favored by party leaders.

“Ultimately, leadership will follow what the conference wants,” Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La.), a senior tax writer, told The Hill. “Right now, leadership’s risk averse. They don’t want to put anybody at risk in a political year. But if the conference feels strongly that this is a path forward on the economy, then I think leadership will pay attention.”

Camp had vowed to pass an overhaul of the tax code — a longtime GOP priority — through his committee in 2013. But he backed away from that goal at the end of the year, at a time when GOP leaders didn’t want to take any attention away from President Obama’s healthcare law.

Top House Republicans also wanted their tax writers to more fully educate the GOP rank and file on tax reform, and Ways and Means Committee members see the retreat as a way to woo conservatives who want to back a tax reform plan.

“I think that Camp and the committee are looking to add their energies to the energy that already exists among other House conservatives to push for tax reform,” a GOP aide said.

“There seems to be a strong desire to stand up and showcase policies that are meaningful and have the potential for real results, and retreat has long been the venue to set a results-oriented agenda.”

Still, the odds appear to remain stacked against Camp, who is in his last scheduled year with the Ways and Means gavel. Even if GOP leaders do come around on tax reform, the divide between Democrats and Republicans about whether an overhauled code should raise new revenue has yet to be bridged.

Senate Democratic leaders have also not made tax reform a priority, while the top tax writer in the chamber, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), could be just weeks away from leaving to become Obama’s envoy to China.

As he seeks to jumpstart momentum for tax reform, Camp also released a Web video to press the case for a reform of the tax code that bolsters incomes for working families and profits for businesses.

That populist pitch comes as Democrats have been pushing an agenda — a minimum wage hike and renewing lapsed jobless benefits — they think will be attractive to the middle-class.

Camp attended a meeting of the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC), of which he is also a member, along with more than a dozen other committee Republicans on Wednesday, in part to show off the new video.

Members of the RSC, many of whom have been frustrated by the recent fiscal deals, gave a thumb’s up to Camp’s appearance.

But Boustany also acknowledged GOP tax writers have to walk a fine line, as they try to engage their fellow Republicans in the coming weeks and at the retreat.

The Ways and Means Committee has, so far, kept a tight lid on the reform bill Camp has been crafting for months, and Boustany said he doubted tax writers would give House Republicans much of a preview of that measure.

“Once you do that, the cat’s out of the bag,” Boustany said. “We want to gauge the interest first.”

But keeping it general at first could also serve another purpose for Camp. GOP leaders have expressed concern that a tax reform vote would put members on the record backing cuts to popular tax breaks.  

By not delving into the details too much at first, Camp and the GOP tax writers can, for the time being, avoid laying out for interested Republicans what can be the harsh trade-offs of reform.

“I kind of look at it like this: You want a nice aroma coming out of the kitchen before you set the table,” Boustany said.