12/06/00 9:55 a.m.
Crane for Ways & Means
Phil Crane never saw a tax-rate cut he didn’t like.

By Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth & NR contributing editor

he contest between Phil Crane of Illinois and Bill Thomas of California for the Ways and Means Committee chairmanship is turning into a much tighter horse race than anyone expected. Crane, the longest serving Republican in the House, has the seniority. Thomas says that westerners are under-represented in the leadership, and thus the tax-writing post should go to him.

Clearly, the GOP needs someone who can advance tax legislation without buckling to the political pressures of the left. The Constitution states that tax bills must originate in the House. Whoever is Ways and Means Committee head is going to have to write arguably the most important tax bill since 1986. The economy is in dire need of a big tax cut — a lot bigger than George W. Bush proposed in the campaign. The economy is starting to feel smothered by a tax burden that has risen from 18 to 21.5% of the GDP in the past five years. The financial markets have tanked of late. A capital-gains cut would instantly resuscitate the sagging NASDAQ.

But who will get it done? Who's the more reliable supply-sider between Crane and Thomas? The answer is that Thomas would be a good chairman. Crane would be exceptionally good. Crane's 30-year conservative credentials are stellar. He has a 92 percent lifetime National Tax Limitation Committee rating. The National Taxpayers Union gives him a lifetime grade of A (versus a C for Thomas). Phil Crane never saw a tax-rate cut he didn't like. He was a leading champion of Reagan's 1981 tax rate cuts. He was for the flat tax long before it was cool. In the early 1970s he endorsed a flat tax of 10 percent. He says his top priority would be to drive a stake through the heart of the death tax.

The liberal wing of the GOP that opposes Crane grouses that he lacks the political gravitas to run this committee effectively. They worry that he couldn't handle the lead Democrat on the Committee, Charlie Rangel, the rambunctious liberal from New York. Nonsense on both counts. Crane's track record indicates that he can very ably run this committee. For the past six years Crane has chaired the Trade Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee. Crane was a maestro in winning congressional support for NAFTA, GATT and China, free trade. That's an astonishingly bullish trifecta given the controversy surrounding each of these trade deals.

If Crane is bypassed it will be an insult to fiscal conservatives and a blow to economic common sense.