Any new corporate tax code, no matter how low its rates, will be full of more holes than Swiss cheese.

President Obama would like to eliminate most corporate tax loopholes, in exchange for a lower corporate tax rate. Such trade-offs usually end up as sleight-of-hand, no matter how well-intentioned. Remember the great 1986 federal tax reform, which lowered income rates while promising to abolish nearly all deductions? The loopholes snuck back in while the rates remained low (and regressive), helping to jack the deficit up to levels that have burdened us ever since.

The president’s current proposal is one more in a series of related “grand bargains” being floated by centrist leaders and commentators in hopes of breaking our current political logjam. These generally involve trading parts of previously sacrosanct benefits, like Social Security, Medicare or public employee pensions, for new social investments in infrastructure, education and research.

Similarly, if one is serious about creating jobs here in America again, it’s possible to imagine a deal that would radically reduce corporate tax rates on goods made in the United States — and that would raise them on goods made elsewhere. We could increase deductions for companies that plow money back into research and development, or tie deductions to the number of new workers hired. We could even consider eliminating corporate taxes altogether, in favor of a much more stringent and progressive income tax code.

After all, we want companies to make as much as possible, don’t we? Then afterward we could use the income tax to reduce the sorts of disparities that are threatening to make a mockery of our democracy (an enormous tax on all corporate political donations would also be a good idea.)

But like the other grand bargainers now circulating out there, President Obama will find no partner across the aisle. Modern right-wing Republicanism views tax cuts of all kinds as the greatest possible social good. Any reductions in social spending are likely to end up in still lower taxes for the wealthiest among us, and any new corporate tax code, no matter how low its rates, will be full of more holes than Swiss cheese.