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听have introduced what should probably be thought of as the first major set of tax proposals in the 2016 Presidential election.听 While their proposals are unlikely to be enacted, they hint at the troubling direction that tax reform debates seem to be headed.

The Senators would reduce the top income tax rate to 25 percent for corporations and pass-through entities like partnerships.听 They would eliminate the taxation of interest, dividends, and capital gain income at the personal level.听 They would allow full deductions of capital investments in the first year and disallow companies鈥� interest deductions.听 They would increase the child credit for middle- income families, but not for poor families.

While many proposals in the 2012 election 鈥� including Mitt Romney鈥檚 鈥� aimed for revenue neutrality when estimated on a conventional (sometimes called a static) basis,听.

Instead, Rubio and Lee aim to make up the lost revenue through economic growth.听听听estimates that the plan would raise GDP by 15 percent and would raise revenue in the long term once those growth effects are taken into account.

The Tax Foundation鈥檚 growth estimate is, to put it mildly, inconsistent with standard economic analysis.听 State-of-the-art analysis of a transition to a consumption tax is found in a 2001 American Economic Review听听co-authored by Alan Auerbach, Larry Kotlikoff and several other economists.听 Their paper estimates that conversion of the then-current system to a pure 鈥渇lat tax鈥� proposal would raise GDP by 4 percent over a decade.

The 鈥渇lat tax鈥� proposal they analyze is more pro-growth than Rubio-Lee is.听 It is a consumption tax.听 Like Rubio-Lee, it eliminates taxation of interest, dividends, and capital gains, introduces expensing, and eliminates corporate interest deduction.听 It goes further, though.听 Unlike Rubio-Lee it also eliminates the entire corporate income tax (whereas Rubio-Lee leave in place a 25 percent corporate tax).听 It also eliminates all itemized deductions, which allows a top rate of 21-22 percent, compared to 35 percent under Rubio-Lee.听 All of those differences should make the flat tax have bigger effects than Rubio-Lee, not smaller.听 This suggests that the claim that Rubio-Lee would boost GDP by 15 percent over a decade is way too high and that the notion that the tax cut will pay for itself is well beyond unrealistic.

Tax rate cuts in the past have not spurred much if any growth. Harvard鈥檚 Martin Feldstein, a leading conservative economist who headed Ronald Reagan鈥檚 Council of Economic Advisers, shows this in听听听regarding the 1981 tax cuts.听 Moreover, there is simply no credible evidence that the 2001 tax cuts generated any growth.听 Indeed,听听was sub-normal and was concentrated in housing and finance, sectors that were not boosted by the 2001 tax cuts and were more likely helped by loose monetary policy.听听听on debt-financed tax cuts shows little if any growth effect from most such changes.听 Moreover,听听shows great variation in top tax rates over time but no correlation between those rates and subsequent rates of economic growth.

In any case, if the proposal were to go forward legislatively, the Joint Tax Committee would have to score it and my guess it that their growth and revenue estimates would be quite different than the听.

In the meantime, discussion of tax reform is a good idea.听 But it鈥檇 be even nicer to discuss serious ways to pay for reform as well.

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