Politics & Power Quote by Richard Neal

A quiet flex is hiding in the wonky packaging. Neal frames “simplification” as the rare policy object everyone can touch without getting burned: not a grand ideological crusade, not a redistribution fight, but a fix that sounds like competence. In a town “that often talks about tax cuts,” he’s calling out Washington’s favorite rhetorical sleight of hand: selling cuts as relief while leaving the labyrinth intact, because the labyrinth is where power lives.

The line “we could quite easily” is the tell. It’s less a literal claim than an indictment. If something so broadly popular is “quite easy,” then the reason it hasn’t happened can’t be technical complexity alone; it’s that complexity is profitable. A complicated code is a subsidy for lobbyists, an advantage for firms with accountants on retainer, and a moat around incumbents who trade in carve-outs. Neal’s subtext: Congress maintains a system that looks accidental but functions like a patronage machine.

His bipartisan gesture - “Republicans and Democrats working together” - is also strategic self-positioning. He’s staking out the high ground of pragmatism, inviting both parties to agree on the feel-good noun (“simplification”) while leaving the knife fight over details offstage: which deductions die, which credits survive, who pays more when loopholes close.

Context matters: tax reform talk spikes when lawmakers want the aura of action without admitting the distributional stakes. Neal’s rhetoric works because it weaponizes common sense. He doesn’t ask for sacrifice; he asks why a supposedly functional government can’t deliver a widely desired, administratively obvious improvement. It’s a critique of incentives disguised as an invitation to cooperate.