Here's how Senate Republicans plan to reform the tax code

On Thursday, the Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee released a report on the prospects of tax reform in the next session of Congress. The report gives insight into what policy reforms Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, might push as he takes over the committee when Republicans assume control of the Senate next month.

Committee staff listed seven principles to guide tax reform. “The first three principles are adopted from President Reagan’s tax reform in the mid-1980s, with four additional principles that are critical in today’s world: (1) efficiency and economic growth, (2) fairness, (3) simplicity, (4) revenue neutrality, (5) permanence, (6) competitiveness, and (7) incentives for savings and investment.”

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About that health-reform cost study

WASHINGTON POST, 10/20/2009 by Karen Ignagni (Hat tip: John Detweiler) - It has been alleged that health insurers commissioned a report recently from PricewaterhouseCoopers as part of a last-ditch effort to kill health-care reform. A relentless public relations campaign has attacked the messengers -- our association, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), and PricewaterhouseCoopers -- as a way of discrediting the findings that major provisions in the Senate Finance Committee proposal will have the unintended effect of increasing the cost of health-care coverage.

Let me be clear and direct: Health plans continue to strongly support reform. In fact, last year we proposed new insurance market rules and consumer protections to achieve universal coverage, remove restrictions on preexisting conditions and end the practice of basing premiums on health status or gender. We firmly believe that all the cost concerns the report raised can be resolved. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

U.S. Senate: Health Bill Passes Committee

FOX NEWS, 10/13/2009 - Health Care Reform Bill Clears Final Senate Panel, Tough Negotiations Loom - The Senate Finance Committee votes to send its version of the legislation to the Senate floor after months of closely watched deliberations. ∴ The committee voted 14-9 in favor of the package. One Republican, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, broke with her party to support the bill. All 13 Democrats on the panel voted in favor of it, while the rest of the Republicans opposed it. ∴ The panel was the last of five to act on health legislation, and the vote marked the biggest advance so far toward health care reform, as the committee's legislation is considered the best building block for a compromise plan in the full Senate. ∴ President Obama hailed the vote as a "critical milestone," in brief remarks late Tuesday. Read more at FOX...

"It's going to cost us an arm and a leg," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said. "The costs of this are astronomical."

"When history calls, history calls," said Sen. Olympia Snow (the only Republican committee member to vote for the bill), while adding that she had some criticism of the bill.

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