Congress's Dave Camp Is Out to Reform the Tax Code

Republican Representative Dave Camp, chairman of what’s usually called the “powerful” House Ways and Means Committee, has a quiet voice. He’s tall and thin and leans in a bit when he speaks, as if to make sure you hear him when he says, “We are going to do a bill this year.”

He means a major bill to rewrite the country’s byzantine tax laws, something that’s eluded Congress since the last overhaul in 1986 and has become Camp’s singular focus. Elected to his first term in the same year as House Speaker John Boehner, Camp has represented central Michigan in the House for 22 years. As head of Ways and Means, with its authority over tax laws, he holds one of the most coveted positions in the Capitol—but you can be excused for never having heard of him. Camp spends weekends in his home state, not on the Sunday shows. He doesn’t offer up provocative sound bites for cable news, either. Instead, he’s been meeting one-on-one with colleagues—including every freshman Republican in the House—trying to persuade them there’s a way for Washington to break out of the cycle of standoffs over taxes and spending. He believes they can come up with a deal that’s short of a grand bargain but still ambitious.