Trump's tax bill faces potential Senate Republican opposition

[webfact]

Trump's tax bill faces potential Senate Republican opposition

By David Morgan

 

Demonstrators take part in a protest against tax cuts for rich people in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., November 27, 2017. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate Republican tax bill strongly backed by President Donald Trump faced potential opposition on Monday from two Republican lawmakers who could prevent the sweeping legislation from reaching the Senate floor.

 

Senators Ron Johnson and Bob Corker, both members of the Senate Budget Committee, said they could vote against the tax package at a Tuesday hearing that Republican leaders hoped would send the legislation to a full Senate vote as early as Thursday. Each senator is seeking different changes to the legislation.

 

Their opposition could create the first major hurdle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where political infighting killed the party's effort to overturn the Obamacare healthcare law earlier this year.

 

Corker, a prominent deficit hawk, said he wants his fellow Republicans to add a backstop measure to prevent tax cuts from ballooning the deficit. Johnson said he wants a bigger tax break for "pass-through" businesses, which include small mom-and-pop enterprises as well as some large, non-corporate businesses.

 

"If we develop a fix prior to committee, I'll probably support it, but if we don't, I'll vote against it,” Johnson's office quoted him telling reporters in his home state of Wisconsin.

 

Republicans have only a one-vote majority on the 23-member budget committee.

 

The potential "no" votes surfaced after Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimated the Republican bill would expand the $20 trillion national debt by $1.4 trillion over a decade.

 

Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit. But Corker said JCT is not expected to release a full macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill ahead of a Senate vote, making a safeguard provision necessary.

 

"I'm not threatening anything. I'm just saying it's very important for me to know that we've got this resolved," Corker told reporters.

Asked if he could vote no on the tax bill at the committee hearing, he replied: "Very possible. Yeah. Sure."

 

Corker and other Republican deficit hawks, including Senator James Lankford, have been holding talks with Senate tax writers and the administration about adding a provision that would raise tax rates if revenues fall short of expectations.

 

"We can’t afford to ignore the debt and deficit issues," Lankford told reporters. "To me, the big issue is how are we dealing with debt and deficit, do we have realistic numbers and is there a backstop in the process just in case we don’t."

 

Republicans see the tax bill as their last chance to score a significant legislative achievement in 2017 and save face with voters in next year's congressional midterm elections. Since Trump took office in January, he and his fellow Republicans have passed no major legislation, despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.

 

The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a one-time, cut-rate tax on corporations' foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation.

 

Financial markets have rallied since Trump's stunning 2016 election victory, partly on hopes of tax cuts for businesses. The Senate bill would deliver these, although its impact on individual Americans and families would be more mixed.

 

BILL WOULD HURT THE POOR, CBO SAYS

 

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another nonpartisan research unit of Congress, said the number of Americans with health insurance would fall by 13 million by 2027 under the Republican tax bill, which would repeal an Obamacare federal fine meant to encourage people to buy health insurance.

 

Such a change would shrink the supply of healthy, young people insured and drive up healthcare insurance premiums. The CBO said this would make people with incomes below $30,000 net losers under the bill.

 

Most of those earning more would be net winners, especially those with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000, it said.

Democrats, who call the bill a give-away to the rich and corporations, are expected to oppose it in the Senate. The House of Representatives approved a tax bill by a 227-205 vote on Nov. 16. No Democrats voted for it. Thirteen Republicans opposed it.

 

If the Senate Budget Committee approves the tax bill on Tuesday, it will allow Republicans to use a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass the measure on a simple majority in the 100-seat Senate, which they control by a slim 52-48 margin. Without reconciliation, the legislation would need 60 votes, allowing Democrats to prevent its passage.

 

Senate Republican leaders did not appear on Monday to have enough votes to pass the legislation, with about a half-dozen Republicans viewed as potential "no" votes.

 

But in a positive sign for Trump's agenda, Republican Senator Rand Paul said on Monday he would support the bill. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has also signalled support.

 

(Additional reporting by Makini Brice, Susan Heavey and Tim Ahmann; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Cynthia Osterman)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2017-11-28

[Dumbastheycome]

Uh  huh. The   grasping  hands  are  out  for   graft? Ain't  the  perfact   domockracy  so   gawd  dang  perfek !

[Jingthing]

Sadly I think they'll pass this turkey just to say they did something. Last I heard this bill only has about 25 percent public support.

Sad.

Sent from my Lenovo A7020a48 using Thailand Forum - Thaivisa mobile app

[Foozool]

9 hours ago, webfact said:

Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit.

[rudi49jr]

It's the same old story over and over again. Republican president says he's going to slash taxes and make life better for everyone. But what he fails to mention is that only the rich will benefit, that he's going to increase spendings for the military with hundreds of billions of dollars, the national deficit will spiral out of control and the poor will suffer. Reagan did it and left Clinton with a huge deficit. He managed to turn thing around and when Bush came to office eight years later he inherited a record budget surplus. And guess what Bush did? He made the same mistake, slashed taxes but spent trillions on the military and ran the country into the ground, just like he did with every business he ran before he became president. Obama was left with a record deficit but still did an amazingly good job, considering what he was up against. Both the Republican dominated House and Senate did everything they could to try to thwart what Obama was trying to do, but when Trump took over the economy was thriving again. And now Trump is trying to take credit for that and is pushing his major 'tax reform', the very mistake that both Reagan and Bush made before him. And then I won't even go into Trump's ties with the Russians, the business interests that he and the clan around him have and try to exploit with Trump being president and the plain fact that he has been caught out lying through his teeth many times already. And still the Trumpettes keep supporting him through thick and thin. What a strange world it is that we live in.