During an interview today on Fox News, Senator Portman discussed the need to enact comprehensive tax reform to help boost wages and bring back jobs and investments lost to overseas competitors. Portman, who has recently hosted tax reform roundtables with local business leaders in Columbus, Dayton, Cleveland and Cincinnati, has been a leader in efforts to reform the tax code and protect taxpayer rights. Said Portman in the interview, “tax relief is necessary to give the economy a shot in the arm and also tax reform is needed for simplification and changing the international system so we can begin to bring some of these jobs and investment back here.”

Excerpts from the interview can be found below and you can watch the video here.

Cavuto: “Where do you think this stands? Is it closer to just tax cuts or tax reform? 

Portman: “It’s got to be both. Tax relief is necessary to give the economy a shot in the arm and also tax reform is needed for simplification and changing the international system so we can begin to bring some of these jobs and investment back here. Both are important. By the way, both are popular. The American people are tired of us just talking about it. They want to see us to get it done both in terms of reforming the code to make it simpler, to make it so that jobs are not leaving our country, money is coming back, but also in terms of tax cuts, particularly middle class tax cuts.”

Cavuto: “You’re pretty conservative when it comes to  tax cuts and by that I mean with the math—you want to make sure they’re paid for. Some people call that revenue neutral. Some real diehards within your party say that by definition minimizes the bang for the buck you would get and that the tax cuts as Senator Portman would want are going to be less than others in your party. Where do you stand on that? 

Portman: “You and I talked about this before. There’s a way to do this that’s both pro-growth and has some tax cuts compared to the current code, but also doesn’t blow a hole in the deficit. I think you do need to have this revenue neutral discipline in place. This is how you do it. You say one, that you’re going to assume the baseline for how much taxes are going to be coming into the government is realistic. By that I mean that you keep in place the so-called extenders, particularly the bonus to appreciation. That gives you $450 billion more of tax cuts compared to how the static score would be, or the current system. So that’s one way you get tax cuts. The second is, you look at the tax reform proposal and you say ‘what’s this really going to mean in terms of people’s behavior?’ Let’s take for example, if you reduce the taxes on businesses for the things that they buy. Depreciation. If you give them a faster write off. What will that mean? That will mean, actually, that there’s more economic growth. So that needs to be taken into account. That in turn will result in more revenue that is called a dynamic score or a macro-economic score.”

Cavuto: “But if you anticipate with that dynamic type of accounting, you’re anticipating that and trying to peg number to it. Is it your sense that the tax cuts we’re looking at, let’s say for corporations, should be 15 percent? The administration seems to be hinting at bringing the corporate rate down to that. Others argue that’s unrealistic. Paul Ryan is on record saying 22, 22.5 percent. What do you think is a realistic expectation for a corporate tax cut?” 

Portman: “In the count text that I just talked about, as low as you can. The realistic number is probably closer to 20 percent than it is 15 percent. Paul may be right. Maybe it’s 22, 22.5 percent.”

Cavuto: “What about individuals then? One of the things that has been raised is maybe you leave the very wealthy out of it. That might be part of the thinking the president might have had in making a debt ceiling deal with Nancy Pelosi and chuck Schumer that kept the government running a few more months, maybe longer than that, and that he might get democratic votes for something that doesn’t include a tax cut on the wealthy. Would you be for that?” 

Portman: “We’ll see how it all comes together. On the business side, we just talked about, the 20 percent, say, that’s as compared to 35 percent. So it’s a substantial reduction in the rate.”

Cavuto: “That is substantial. Would you be okay on the individual rates the rich not getting a tax cut?”

Portman: “The key there, as I said earlier, is middle class tax cuts. Not just because it’s the right thing to do in terms of the economy and so on, but it’s going to be more popular as well. So right now, I think the biggest challenge we have in the economy, and again you and I have talked about this, is that wages have been flat. Look back over the last couple of decades, you really haven’t seen an increase in wage growth but you have seen an increase in expenses.”

Cavuto: “You’d be open to that retroactive to the beginning of the year if you’re running late on getting this thing passed. Would you be open to that?” 

Portman: “I’m not big on retroactivity period. I think it ought to be prospective. But, yeah, I think we ought to be putting in place something that really gives the economy a shot in the arm, so pro-growth, and then we also ought to be sure we’re giving people in the middle some reflief so that they are feeling like they’re getting ahead.”

Cavuto: “I’m sorry. I’m not clear. Would you be for them being retroactive?”

Portman: “No, I’m not interested. Retroactivity as a matter of principle is a tough thing. It’s not fair to people who have planned.” 

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