Felix Salmon would like President Obama to go after the mortgage interest tax deduction. Matt Yglesias comments:
The implication here is that what the country needs from the president is some bold straight talk on taxes, and I think that’s just wrong. Look at what happened when the Bush administration kinda sorta went after the mortgage interest tax deduction—wonky bloggers praised him, Democrats slammed him, Republicans ran for the hills, he abandoned the idea, and everyone forgot the whole thing ever happened. If Obama had proposed a revenue-neutral phase out of the tax deduction, you’d just get the same thing in reverse.
The right way for the White House to engage with this issue is (a) vaguely, and then (b) in private.
Actually, I’d say the right way for the White House to engage with this issue is (c) not at all. I mean, I’m all in favor of phasing out the home mortgage deduction, but it’s political suicide and everyone knows it. Whether privately or not, no Republican will ever agree to it, and I don’t imagine many Democrats would either. It’s the fastest way I can think of to derail tax reform completely.
This is too bad, but the world is what the world is. It might be possible to propose replacing the mortgage tax deduction with a tax credit, which would be a bit more progressive, but it’s a little hard trying to figure out what the political coalition for that is either. Working quietly on tax reform instead of making it into a huge public issue is a good idea (though possibly no longer feasible in the era of Fox News), but I think wonks should just give up on the idea of ditching the home mortgage deduction and focus instead on stuff that might actually happen.
