Five easy steps to tax reform. (Politico).

Before September 11 of last year, Social Security reform sat at the center of the Bush administration's economic agenda. The war, a plummeting stock market, and resistance from congressional leaders, however, has most likely postponed Social Security reform until after the 2004 elections. So now the administration has signaled another issue for its big push in 2003: fundamental tax reform.

The drive to cut and simplify taxes has been building momentum within the GOP for two decades. In 1981, President Reagan won a 25 percent cut in marginal income tax rates. This supply-side trim was sold as an economic stimulus package to create jobs, wealth, and increase government revenues. (It did all three.)

Then the 1986 Tax Reform Act reduced America's top tax rate to 28 percent, while eliminating many deductions and credits. The capital gains tax, though, was destructively raised from 20 to 28 percent. In 1990 and 1993, Bush Senior and then Bill Clinton raised personal income tax rates to 39.6 percent.

George W. Bush's 2001 tax cut was not sold as a supply-side economic stimulus. While Reagan had promised to increase government revenues via the economic growth his tax reductions would bring, Bush's message was much more fundamentally conservative. Bush the younger warned that Congress would spend the surpluses then overflowing Washington unless the money was returned to individual taxpayers.

Back in the mid 1990s, the flat tax debate caught fire, as reflected in Steve Forbes' 1996 Presidential campaign and the speeches of House Majority Leader Dick Armey. Then a quiet fell over the debate, and conservative activists began to ask, "Whatever happened to the flat tax? Why don't we talk about it any more?"

But the flat tax didn't die: It became a consensus issue that lay dormant as long as a Democratic President had the veto at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That barrier has now fallen.

There are two routes to a single-rate tax. For one, the President or a Congressional leader could draft a flat income or sales tax and present the ...