The Weekly Standard

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee was among friends the evening of June 5, 1995, when he invited a small group of like-minded conservatives to his office in the Cannon building to talk taxes. One of those in attendance at Rep. Bill Archer’s soiree might have been more libertarian than the others, another more of a monetarist than a supply-sider, but everyone present agreed on the basics. No one was there to discuss raising taxes to reduce the deficit, thank you very much. Nobody wanted to figure out how government could do more for people, or how to add funds to the enforcement budget of the Internal Revenue Service in order to improve ” voluntary compliance” with the tax code. No. What was under discussion was how to change all that — the Big Picture of conservative, Republican tax reform.

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