THE FLAT TAX

Any doubt that these are times of revolutionary change can be dispelled by the nature and substance of today's issue discussions. All the action is in a conservative direction, and the big political question of 1996 will be whether a liberal Democratic president can succeed in an audacious attempt to hijack conservative-sounding themes, as he did in this week's State of the Union address.

Where short years ago no one seriously challenged Big Government's core assumptions, the only question being at what rate it should expand its reach, today even that Democratic president finds it necessary to announce that the era of Big Government inaugurated by his party 60 years ago "is over." No major Democratic voice disputed this declaration. On welfare, the current debate is not whether, but how to replace the failed liberal welfare state with a new vision of an opportunity society.

On these and countless other issues, evidence abounds of how far the debate is moving toward freedom and away from government as the solution to every problem. On no issue, however, is the freedom tide running stronger than it is with various proposals to junk today's Internal Revenue Code, with its hundreds of thousands of indecipherable pages, and replace it with some version of a flat tax on incomes and a return that could be filed on a postcard.

There is the astonishing success of neophyte Republican presidential candidate Steve Forbes. Forbes, who in his first political contest has vaulted from obscurity to a solid second place in every state, was a late entrant to a GOP field that lacked any contender willing to place the Reaganesque rhetoric of growth, optimism and opportunity at the center of his campaign. This he has done by trumpeting the flat tax and declaring that "the only thing to do with the current tax code is to junk it, repeal it and drive a stake through its heart so it never rises again to plague Americans." Although it is delivered by candidate altogether lacking in charisma, that line brings audiences to their feet from Portsmouth, N.H. to Phoenix, Ariz. It can't be denied that the Forbes millions have fueled this rise in a self-financed media blitz, but does anyone believe he could have come half this far with a less salient message?

Questions abound. They concern implementation. Should it be immediate or phased in over several years? What about the exact rate? Should it be 16 percent, or 21 percent, or something in between? How high the personal and dependent exemptions? (All the flat-tax proposals would sharply raise them; the Forbes plan, for instance, would leave a family of four earning $36,000 exempt from all income tax.) What about the deductions on mortgage interest for a principal residence, or for charitable donations?

There is time to address each of these. What is important now is that this debate is moving to center stage on an American political scene that until recently didn't consider them worthy of the slightest attention.

Flat-tax proposals have either been announced or are on their way from House Majority Leader Dick Armey, from presidential candidate Sen. Phil Gramm and from others. A report issued last week from a commission chaired by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp sketched the broad designs of and case for a single rate of taxation on incomes that would end the double and triple taxation of savings and dividend income.

All these proposals have the overriding virtue of simplicity. All are a huge step toward freedom. The leading GOP presidential contender, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, has joined House Speaker Newt Gingrich in pledging hearings on the Kemp commission report. Detailed hearings should follow in both the House and Senate, preparing the way for an invigorating 1996 campaign fought out in large part on this issue. This is an issue worthy of such a great campaign. Who knows? There may just be a flatter, fairer, simpler tax code in store for Americans, and with it a huge expansion of our freedom.