A Better Way
A Better Way is a conservative agenda for U.S. governance, crafted by former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan as well as Kevin Brady, former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Ryan calls the six-point plan "a complete alternative to the Left's agenda". Shortly after the 2016 United States elections, Speaker Ryan said that the plan, described by Reuters as an "aggressive Republican legislative agenda", provides a blueprint for laws he expects to spearhead in the Republican congress in cooperation with the Republican Trump administration. For someone other than the party's nominee  to direct the party's agenda in a presidential election year has been termed "a rare move". Six-point plan. The plan covers six points: Poverty, National Security, Economy, Constitution, Health Care, and Tax Reform. The points in the plan, which Speaker Ryan intended to press forward in the 2017-2018 115th Congress, had been described as "mostly ignor[ing] the areas where Trump's agenda clash with tenets of conservative doctrine" such as trade policy, immigration reform and entitlement cuts. It did not cover some points that were major issues in the presidential campaign, such as a border wall with  Mexico and banning immigrants who are Muslims. Border adjustment. One of the largest revenue increasing proposals of the plan is reform of corporate tax which is "border adjusted." This would mean that exports would be exempt from tax and imports would be subject to it. "The Economist" and others note that this may fall foul of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules. "Bloomberg View" noted that the proposed tax would favour domestically produced goods as they would be taxed less than imports, to a degree varying across sectors. For example, the wage component of the cost of domestically produced goods would  not be taxed. Because the United States imports more than it exports, border adjustability would raise $1.2trn over a decade, covering almost two-thirds of the cost of cutting the tax rate to 20%, according to the Tax Policy Centre. On January 16, Donald Trump commented that a border adjustment tax would be "too complicated" in a "Wall Street Journal" article. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer stated on January 26 said that the proposal was "one idea" of the administration in regards to tax policy.