By Ralph Benko

From Forbes.com:

The White House’s National Economic Council Director, the fiscally brilliant Gary Cohn, is reportedly working on a 200-proof — great — version of a permanent rate-cutting, base-broadening tax reform. The White House is circulating a Joint Statement regarding the growing political consensus on tax reform:

Today, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) issued the following joint statement on tax reform:

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We have always been in agreement that tax relief for American families should be at the heart of our plan. We also believe there should be a lower tax rate for small businesses so they can compete with larger ones, and lower rates for all American businesses so they can compete with foreign ones. The goal is a plan that reduces tax rates as much as possible, allows unprecedented capital expensing, places a priority on permanence, and creates a system that encourages American companies to bring back jobs and profits trapped overseas.

Can we really get “a plan that reduces tax rates as much as possible, allows unprecedented capital expensing, places a priority on permanence, and creates a system that encourages American companies to bring back jobs and profits trapped overseas?” It’s a compelling goal.

If anybody has the sure hand to fulfill President Trump’s directive to lead us all the way out of the tax code briar patch it’s Br’er Cohn, supported by House Ways and Means Chairman Br’er Brady & company. That said, it is also good that there’s a Plan B.

Larry Kudlow and Steve Forbes, together with Steve Moore and Art Laffer, together founded a nonprofit group called The Committee To Unleash Prosperity.  Full disclosure, I serve as Editor-in-Chief of its website’s Supply Side Blog, a blog considered by some the definitive Web-based “bulletin board” for those devoted to full spectrum economic growth as something that deserves highest national priority on practical, political, and moral grounds.

Politico recently reported Kudlow paying a visit on the President. It, reportedly, was one of several of his recent trips to the White House.

“They know they could really use a win,” said Larry Kudlow, an informal economic adviser to the Trump campaign, who met with Trump last week. “The president, from the get-go, has been much more comfortable with tax cuts than health care.”

That same Politico article that opened with Kudlow closes with a striking statement by Steve Forbes:

Outside economic advisers, such as Steve Forbes, are pushing the president to pursue a package of simply cutting Americans’ and businesses’ tax rates without overhauling the tax code itself.

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“The heck with the Congressional Budget Office, we’ve got to get something done,” Forbes told POLITICO. “Then, we could leave the heavy lifting for another day.”

Read more from Forbes.com: