To me, the single rate system proposed by Jack Kemp and others is simply not fair. There is no way we can get to a single rate without raising taxes on the middle class and giving a tax cut to people at the top. For many Americans, paying taxes constitutes the closest contact they have with the federal government all year. It is a source of immense anger and anxiety not just to have to pay taxes but to have to go through the pain and confusion of calculating them each spring. Finally, we need to find a way to make this economy grow again at rates we have not seen for the past twenty to twenty-five years.
Tax reform can be an important part of stimulating that growth.
Surely we can work together to get the American economy growing again. I was happy to hear Dick Gephardt mention the word growth, even if right at the last second. The idea of growth should be at the forefront of the Democratic Party's own debates about the future of this country. In some cases today, the effective tax on the sale of an asset held for longer than five years is close to 60 or 70 percent. The United States today is trying to sell capitalism to the world.