GOP Lawmakers Not Happy with Trump Tax Plan

Playbook: “The White House yesterday sent out the message that they planned to cut the corporate tax rate to 15 percent — fulfilling a campaign-season promise. Is this an opening negotiating position or what Trump wants to achieve? We don’t know, because we haven’t seen him in a successful legislative negotiation yet.”

“But privately, Capitol Hill Republicans are seething. Why? Because a 15 percent corporate rate is practically impossible to achieve without blowing a hole in the budget. The president might be willing to balloon the national deficit, but Hill Republicans — which have made debts and deficits their central issue over the last decade — are not. To make a cut like that permanent, Republicans would need Democratic votes in the Senate, because it would run afoul of reconciliation rules. Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republicans raise $1 trillion in new cash with the border-adjustment tax, and they can only get the corporate rate down to 20 percent. Trump is signaling he has no interest in the so-called BAT.”