Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) told Bloomberg that he backs the GOP tax plan and that he thinks the bill will pass without a deficit-cutting mechanism sought by Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN).

Said Daines: “That’s going nowhere. What Bob was suggesting is just causing more problems.”

Daines added that he would oppose changing the bill to retain the alternative-minimum tax or to add another tax increase.

CNN reports GOP lawmakers are “fuming” at Corker.

John Harwood: “As much as they hoped to avoid it, Republican senators considering their tax-cut votes now face a clear-cut choice between faith and evidence.”

“Faith in tax-cuts as the path to economic growth has reigned supreme within Republican theology since Ronald Reagan. The party clings so strongly to this belief that it has become the answer to competing concerns over the national debt; growth sparked by tax cuts, insist White House officials and GOP leaders, will reduce, not increase, annual budget deficits.”

“Evidence for that belief has long been weak. On Thursday, it got even weaker.”

As for President Trump’s conclusion that a government shutdown might be good politically for him, Playbook notes: “You won’t find many Republicans on Capitol Hill who think that a shutdown is good for them.”

Politico: “Republicans are on the verge of a massive tax overhaul that would hand President Trump his first major legislative victory. But the $1.5 trillion tax package could trigger eye-popping cuts to a slew of federal programs, including Medicare. Unless Congress acts swiftly to stop it, as much as $150 billion per year would be cut from initiatives ranging from farm subsidies to student loans to support services for crime victims. Medicare alone could see cuts of $25 billion a year. And the specter of those cuts has thrust Congress into a high-stakes game of political chicken.”

“With so much attention focused on the tax bill itself neither lawmakers nor many of the advocacy groups had paid as much attention to the depth and breadth of the cuts that will ensue unless the House and Senate come up with a bipartisan deal to stop them. Some groups had run Medicare ads, but they were largely overshadowed by the tax debate itself.”

Washington Post: “Now, Republican leaders may have to brace for an intraparty battle over how far to go to accommodate deficit concerns. Other Republicans are arguing strongly against reducing the size of the bill’s tax cut, as may now be necessary to satisfy the deficit hawks.”

“Thursday evening, senators were eyeing a wide range of options to move legislation forward. They are discussing adding higher taxes on upper-income Americans and modestly rolling back the bill’s large corporate tax cut. But they did not have an obvious solution, given the need to add hundreds of billions of revenue back into the bill.”

Wall Street Journal: “One possible outcome is that the corporate tax rate would start at 20% and rise in stair-step increments in later years. That move could shrink the size of the tax cut by at least $350 billion over a decade, making it about three-quarters of its previous size and potentially dampening some of the economic growth Republicans said they are trying to create.”

Axios: “Aides say they still hope to bring all 52 Republicans to yes. But it’s going to be extremely hard to find ways to raise as much as $500 billion in revenue overnight, and raising taxes could lose other members.”

A Republican plan to automatically trigger tax increases or spending cuts if revenue falls short has been shot down the U.S. Senate’s parliamentarian, the Washington Post reports.

“The tension played out during a tense 62-minute standoff on the Senate floor, as Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN), Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) refused to vote with their colleagues until they had assurances that more changes could be made to the bill.”

Axios: “A trigger was the way Republicans were going to get members worried about the deficit to back the tax bill. Now Republicans need to find hundreds of billions of dollars to make deficit hawks happy or the bill might die — and many Republicans don’t like any other ideas to raise taxes.”