As far as sales pitches go, this wouldn’t even win the notorious third prize in Glengarry Glen Ross.  Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told MSNBC this morning that the joint select committee won’t produce “higher tax rates” — and then said that the deal will be based on ending “the Bush tax cuts”:

“Let me be very clear: Even in the Biden committee none of us ever talked about raising tax rates, we are not there,” the assistant minority leader said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown.” “We believe, however, that closing loopholes can get us to where we need to be.”

Clyburn stressed that while increased taxes are doing going to be part of a supercommittee deal, new revenues must be.

“The difficulty is going to be whether or not we will be honest about what it takes to deal with debt and deficits and that is there’s got to be revenue coming from somewhere, and where we get that revenue is going to be very, very important.”

In addition to ending loopholes – which some Republicans have in the past framed as tax hikes – Clyburn said that new revenues would also come from the end of Bush-era tax cuts, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and saving money on interest because the deficit won’t be growing as rapidly. The Bush tax cuts were extended for two years last December in a deal worked out between President Barack Obama and then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Ahem.  The so-called “Bush tax cuts” were reductions in tax rates.  They weren’t loopholes or credits offered to specific companies or individuals based on investments.  Bush lowered tax rates across the board, and they were only temporary because Democrats threatened to block them without the addition of sunset dates.

If the committee reverses the Bush tax cuts, that is a tax hike.  People will have to pay higher rates than they have in at least eight years.  Rates will go up on the very people we need to have investing in economic growth, and depending on which rates go up, a great deal of the middle class as well.  By any definition, this is a tax hike and a rate hike.

Tax reform is possible without raising rates — and in fact, we could get higher revenues while lowering overall rates, especially in corporate taxes.  In that area, we need to clear out all of the crony-capitalism targeted breaks inserted by members of Congress from both parties on behalf of their backers.  We also need to rid the corporate tax code of the built-in social engineering that attempts to pick winners and losers, rather than letting consumers and the market make those decisions.

Clyburn doesn’t appear to be interested in actual tax reform or the economic growth that would ensue from it.  He wants to raise taxes and keep his social-engineering tools intact by being anything but clear as to what a tax hike actually is, and what it will do to an economy already falling into malaise and stagnation.