A partisan Republican bill that lets taxes rise seems perverse.

Henry Olsen writes that Republicans can raise taxes on high earners without worrying about the political consequences. Republicans have generally drawn the lesson that all tax increases are politically deadly from the experience of President George H. W. Bush’s 1990 tax increase. But Olsen points out that the 1990 tax increase hit a lot more people than anything that is being contemplated today (outside of the tariffs, that is).

I think Olsen’s case is in one respect even stronger than he suggests. A better parallel than 1990 is the tax increase of January 2013. That, too, was a time when a temporary tax cut — at that time, the tax cut signed by George W. Bush — was set to expire.

Back then, many Republicans acquiesced to a deal that made most of those tax cuts permanent but allowed the top marginal tax rate to rise. Taxes therefore rose from 2012 to 2013 but by less than they would have if Republicans had done nothing. That fact reduced the amount of fire Republicans took from anti-tax groups.

They paid no price for it politically. The next national elections, in 2014, saw a Republican wave. This time, too, what Republicans would be doing is blocking a bunch of tax increases that are scheduled to take place but letting a few of them happen.

But there’s also a difference from both the 1990 and 2013 precedents that Olsen does not mention, and it’s one that cuts against the idea that Republicans should let taxes rise on high earners in their reconciliation bill. On those previous occasions, Congress passed bipartisan deals that (in 1990) raised some taxes or (in 2013) let some taxes rise. In 2013, for example, only a bit more than a third of House Republicans voted for the deal.

This time, what is being contemplated is a partisan Republican bill, for which the party would supply nearly all of the votes. Republican leaders would need to round up a lot of reluctant votes for it, and it would be a genuine novelty.

I can see a case for making a deal with the Democrats that involves letting some taxes rise — as in 2013. Passing a partisan Republican bill that lets taxes rise seems perverse.