Friday, December 01, 2017 8:34:41 AM
Republicans rewriting tax bill — with fight pushed into Friday
"Adding deficit 'trigger' to Senate tax plan raises new hurdle "
Looks the parliamentarian knocked the trigger out of the ring.
A Joint Committee on taxation analysis predicts the tax bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion, which could be problematic for lawmakers like Sen.
Bob Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Senate GOP leaders are still making major changes to the plan in order to win over several hold-outs.
By SEUNG MIN KIM and COLIN WILHELM
11/30/2017 10:59 AM EST
Updated 11/30/2017 10:12 PM EST
Senate Republicans are still scrambling to win over enough votes to pass their massive tax code overhaul, with major changes to the bill still up in the air and debate pushed into Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the next vote in the tax debate will come at 11 a.m. Friday, as work continues behind the scenes to win over skeptical deficit hawks and other swing votes.
Multiple GOP senators leaving the chamber after a dramatic late afternoon vote said a key proposal for deficit hawks — a trigger to raise tax rates if sufficient economic growth did not materialize — would not pass procedural muster and would need to find something else to satisfy the bloc of deficit hawk holdouts, led by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
“It doesn’t look like the trigger is going to work, according to the parliamentarian,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “So we have an alternative, frankly: a tax increase we don’t want to do to try to address Sen. Corker’s concerns.”
Corker told reporters: “My understanding is, that the parliamentarian has ruled against it so they’re just going to automatically put [tax increases] in, period.” Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the revenue raised with tax increases — which senators say would kick in six years after the enactment of the tax legislation — would total about $350 billion, although Cornyn suggested that figure may need to go higher.
Late Thursday, Republicans huddled with leadership and tax policy staff to work on a solution.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who supports the current package, estimated that Republicans needed to find an additional $370 billion to $400 billion within their package to placate concerns about increased deficits.
"What we're trying to do right now is get to the point where nobody's going to get exactly what they want but enough for us to get the bill passed," he told reporters.
The sudden need to regroup came after extended drama on the Senate floor Thursday during an otherwise mundane procedural vote, when Corker, Flake and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) initially withheld their support on a vote to move forward with the bill. Ultimately they aligned with their party, but it suggested real concerns remained, including friction among Republicans over whether to stick to the 20 percent corporate tax rate rate insisted on by the White House.
Johnson withheld his vote during the standoff in exchange for votes on his amendments, including one that would further increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses to around 25 percent.
The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate and lower rates for many, though not all, individuals. Senate Republicans have said their plan would boost the economy but not by nearly as much as some lawmakers hope, a new official analysis shows.
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said Thursday that the GOP plan would fall well short of covering its $1.5 trillion cost through additional economic growth; it predicted $407 billion in additional revenue would come in by boosting the economy by 0.8 percent over the next decade.
That would mean a $1 trillion deficit increase, which is problematic for lawmakers like Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. A Senate Finance Committee aide noted that the analysis was "incomplete" since the bill text has yet to be finalized.
Democrats have blasted Republicans for rushing the bill to the floor while considering significant eleventh-hour changes to the sprawling tax code rewrite.
“This is tax, one of the most complicated issues before us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Thursday. “These changes and the way the majority leader is handling this make it impossible for any independent analyst to get a good look at the bill and how it would impact our country.”
Yet, Sen. John McCain, who gave Republicans a boost earlier in the day when he broke his long silence and said he would back the legislation, signaled he was satisfied with the process, noting the bill went through “a thorough mark-up in the Senate Finance Committee.”
The Arizona Republican, who helped tank the party’s Obamacare repeal efforts earlier this year, had said going through a regular legislative process was one of his major concerns.
The most reliable politics newsletter.
But it was clear Senate Republicans still have myriad issues to resolve in order to lock down at least 50 votes to ensure final passage of the tax bill on the floor. Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to evade a Democratic filibuster.
Other key GOP votes such as Corker, Flake and Susan Collins of Maine have yet to commit to the bill, for varying reasons. And Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana are trying to secure even more generous treatment of small businesses after extracting a boost in an earlier round of negotiations.
Collins plans to offer a half-dozen amendments, including one that would hike the proposed corporate tax rate of 20 percent to restore a deduction for up to $10,000 for property taxes. She is among a handful of Republican senators who say they are open to raising the proposed corporate rate in order to fund other tax provisions in the bill.
The moderate senator is also seeking to extract some health care assurances because the current tax bill repeals Obamacare's requirement that everyone carry insurance or pay a penalty. She has pushed for two separate health care bills — one to stabilize the markets and another to protect pre-existing conditions and use high-risk pools — to be grafted to a short-term spending bill that would need to pass before government funding expires Dec. 8.
Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 Republicans that frequently buck their party's leadership, rejected the notion of supporting those health care bills.
Members of the group also said they opposed amendments that would raise the proposed corporate income tax rate above 20 percent, and bristled at the idea of a delayed cut, which the Senate's bill does largely due to budgetary rules.
"It's a great strategy if you’re looking to put the Democrats in the majority and give them credit for what we did," Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said of the Senate's proposed one-year delay to a corporate tax cut.
Brian Faler, Bernie Becker and Elana Schor contributed to this report.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/30/mccain-to-vote-for-gop-tax-bill-270511
See also:
Trump Sells Tax Plan With False Claims
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=136532713
"Adding deficit 'trigger' to Senate tax plan raises new hurdle "
Looks the parliamentarian knocked the trigger out of the ring.
A Joint Committee on taxation analysis predicts the tax bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion, which could be problematic for lawmakers like Sen.
Bob Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
Senate GOP leaders are still making major changes to the plan in order to win over several hold-outs.
By SEUNG MIN KIM and COLIN WILHELM
11/30/2017 10:59 AM EST
Updated 11/30/2017 10:12 PM EST
Senate Republicans are still scrambling to win over enough votes to pass their massive tax code overhaul, with major changes to the bill still up in the air and debate pushed into Friday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the next vote in the tax debate will come at 11 a.m. Friday, as work continues behind the scenes to win over skeptical deficit hawks and other swing votes.
Multiple GOP senators leaving the chamber after a dramatic late afternoon vote said a key proposal for deficit hawks — a trigger to raise tax rates if sufficient economic growth did not materialize — would not pass procedural muster and would need to find something else to satisfy the bloc of deficit hawk holdouts, led by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).
“It doesn’t look like the trigger is going to work, according to the parliamentarian,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “So we have an alternative, frankly: a tax increase we don’t want to do to try to address Sen. Corker’s concerns.”
Corker told reporters: “My understanding is, that the parliamentarian has ruled against it so they’re just going to automatically put [tax increases] in, period.” Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the revenue raised with tax increases — which senators say would kick in six years after the enactment of the tax legislation — would total about $350 billion, although Cornyn suggested that figure may need to go higher.
Late Thursday, Republicans huddled with leadership and tax policy staff to work on a solution.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who supports the current package, estimated that Republicans needed to find an additional $370 billion to $400 billion within their package to placate concerns about increased deficits.
"What we're trying to do right now is get to the point where nobody's going to get exactly what they want but enough for us to get the bill passed," he told reporters.
The sudden need to regroup came after extended drama on the Senate floor Thursday during an otherwise mundane procedural vote, when Corker, Flake and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) initially withheld their support on a vote to move forward with the bill. Ultimately they aligned with their party, but it suggested real concerns remained, including friction among Republicans over whether to stick to the 20 percent corporate tax rate rate insisted on by the White House.
Johnson withheld his vote during the standoff in exchange for votes on his amendments, including one that would further increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses to around 25 percent.
The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate and lower rates for many, though not all, individuals. Senate Republicans have said their plan would boost the economy but not by nearly as much as some lawmakers hope, a new official analysis shows.
The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said Thursday that the GOP plan would fall well short of covering its $1.5 trillion cost through additional economic growth; it predicted $407 billion in additional revenue would come in by boosting the economy by 0.8 percent over the next decade.
That would mean a $1 trillion deficit increase, which is problematic for lawmakers like Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. A Senate Finance Committee aide noted that the analysis was "incomplete" since the bill text has yet to be finalized.
Democrats have blasted Republicans for rushing the bill to the floor while considering significant eleventh-hour changes to the sprawling tax code rewrite.
“This is tax, one of the most complicated issues before us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Thursday. “These changes and the way the majority leader is handling this make it impossible for any independent analyst to get a good look at the bill and how it would impact our country.”
Yet, Sen. John McCain, who gave Republicans a boost earlier in the day when he broke his long silence and said he would back the legislation, signaled he was satisfied with the process, noting the bill went through “a thorough mark-up in the Senate Finance Committee.”
The Arizona Republican, who helped tank the party’s Obamacare repeal efforts earlier this year, had said going through a regular legislative process was one of his major concerns.
The most reliable politics newsletter.
But it was clear Senate Republicans still have myriad issues to resolve in order to lock down at least 50 votes to ensure final passage of the tax bill on the floor. Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to evade a Democratic filibuster.
Other key GOP votes such as Corker, Flake and Susan Collins of Maine have yet to commit to the bill, for varying reasons. And Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana are trying to secure even more generous treatment of small businesses after extracting a boost in an earlier round of negotiations.
Collins plans to offer a half-dozen amendments, including one that would hike the proposed corporate tax rate of 20 percent to restore a deduction for up to $10,000 for property taxes. She is among a handful of Republican senators who say they are open to raising the proposed corporate rate in order to fund other tax provisions in the bill.
The moderate senator is also seeking to extract some health care assurances because the current tax bill repeals Obamacare's requirement that everyone carry insurance or pay a penalty. She has pushed for two separate health care bills — one to stabilize the markets and another to protect pre-existing conditions and use high-risk pools — to be grafted to a short-term spending bill that would need to pass before government funding expires Dec. 8.
Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 Republicans that frequently buck their party's leadership, rejected the notion of supporting those health care bills.
Members of the group also said they opposed amendments that would raise the proposed corporate income tax rate above 20 percent, and bristled at the idea of a delayed cut, which the Senate's bill does largely due to budgetary rules.
"It's a great strategy if you’re looking to put the Democrats in the majority and give them credit for what we did," Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said of the Senate's proposed one-year delay to a corporate tax cut.
Brian Faler, Bernie Becker and Elana Schor contributed to this report.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/30/mccain-to-vote-for-gop-tax-bill-270511
See also:
Trump Sells Tax Plan With False Claims
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=136532713
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
