Comment

Abstract

Like most political scientists, I am an inveterate vote-counter. The question on the floor is whether the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (TRA) should be thought in some sense to be a watershed act, launching a new era of American tax politics and policy. Beyond the arguments intrinsic to each article, beyond their separate and important contributions to our understanding of TRA and the factors that led to its enactment, there is a common issue at stake about which there is considerable disagreement. Three of the authors vote yes for watershed, although in different ways and for different reasons. For Catherine Rudder, TRA is representative of the new tax politics of divided party government. For Dennis Ippolito, TRA is indicative of the new fiscal policy of insufficient constraints. For Cathie Martin, TRA foreshadows the new political-economics of industrial transformation. To be fair, none of these authors take an emphatic position. All hesitate to predict the future based on