While it's not a perfect plan, the tax reform proposal offered by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R., Mich., last week would lift economic growth, says Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum.

The bill would create fewer and generally lower individual rates, he writes in The Wall Street Journal. The corporate tax rate would be cut, and the treatment of international profits would be improved, he says. The rate reductions are offset by dropping numerous special tax preferences.

"Lowering rates and ridding the base of special provisions means investments won't be tax-driven," writes Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "Capital moves to the highest rates of return."

The Camp bill includes many incentives for the better allocation of capital and skills, Holtz-Eakin says. And it contains incentives for the accumulation of capital.

Holtz-Eakin and his American Action Forum colleague Gordon Gray estimate that the key planks of the Camp plan could raise GDP by as much as 5 percentage points over the next decade. "The growth bonus would amount to about 500,000 jobs annually in the near term," Holtz-Eakin says.

While Camp's proposal hasn't received much support in Congress, even from some Republicans, he's undaunted.

"I think nine months is a long time to coast,” Camp told reporters at a breakfast Thursday, Time reports. "I don’t think people really sent their representatives to Washington to warm a chair for the bulk of the year, particularly when it is a two-year term."

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