“I come from the poor people, and I have been here working my whole stinkin’ career for people who don’t have a chance, and I really resent anybody that says I’m doing it for the rich. Give me a break. I think you guys overplay all the time, and it gets old. And frankly, you ought to quit it.”
— Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), quoted by RealClearPolitics, in an exchange with Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
Yahoo News: “If you’re one of the lucky Americans who owns a private jet, don’t fret. Republicans have your back—in the form of tax breaks.”
“The new Senate tax bill will give those who own or lease private planes breaks on the amount they pay to companies for maintenance, storage, fueling and even when they want to hire pilots and a crew onboard. “
“The House passed its version of the Republican tax overhaul Thursday, notching a key win for President Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-WI). But obstacles remain in the Senate, which is refining its own version of the legislation amid objections from key GOP senators,” the Washington Post reports.
“The bill passed with 227 votes in favor and 205 against. 13 Republicans voted against the bill. No Democrats voted for it.”
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“The tax bill Senate Republicans are championing would give large tax cuts to millionaires while raising taxes on American families earning $10,000 to $75,000 over the next decade, according to an analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’ official nonpartisan analysts,” the Washington Post reports.
“President Trump and Republican lawmakers have been heralding their bill as a win for hard-working Americans, but the JCT report casts serious doubt on that claim. Tax hikes for households earning $10,000 to $30,000 would start in 2021 and grow sharply from there. By the year 2027, Americans earning $30,000 to $75,000 a year would also be forced to pay more in taxes even though people earning over $100,000 continue to get substantial tax cuts.”
“I just picked up the newspaper today and they’ve made a huge change. Every day there seems to be – no, it’s not regular order.”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by Axios, on the Republican tax bill.
“As Congress rushes to pass the biggest tax reform legislation in three decades, high-powered business and conservative groups are holding fire on provisions they don’t like in order to avoid derailing the vote,” Politico reports.
“The kumbaya attitude emanates in large part from a sense of desperation among Republicans who believe the party needs to show voters and donors a concrete victory ahead of the 2018 midterms or risk losing control of one or both chambers of Congress, say strategists and conservative activists.”
Said one GOP lobbyist: “It is kind of unreal. People know this is a freight train coming, and they are doing everything they can to get their stuff on it rather than stand in front of it.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) may not be the only GOP senator to pull support from his party’s tax bill, the New York Times reports.
“Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee and John McCain of Arizona have voiced their own concerns and refused to say whether they would ultimately vote for the tax bill.”
“With the House expected to pass its tax legislation, the fate of the overhaul fell into the hands of Republican senators, who grappled with the dangerous political prospects of passing a bill that critics said could undermine the health care system and favored companies over the middle class.”
Washington Post: GOP tax plan in trouble in Senate.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) told the Wall Street Journal that the Republican tax plan benefits corporations more than any other kind of business, and for that reason he is opposed to the bill.
Said Johnson: “If they can pass it without me, let them. I’m not going to vote for this tax package.”
Axios: “Unless they get Democrats on board, Republicans can only afford to lose two GOP votes. This is one.”
A new Quinnipiac poll finds that voters disapprove of the Republican tax plan by a 52% to 25% margin.
Republican voters approve 60% to 15%, with 26% undecided. All other party, gender, education, age and racial groups disapprove.
Wall Street Journal: “Tucked into Republicans’ tax overhaul bill is a technical tweak to how inflation is measured. The change is designed to hold down the deficit, but over time it becomes a significant tax increase that hits many of the same middle-class households who start out as the plan’s beneficiaries.”
“Both the House and Senate versions of the tax bill would adjust the income thresholds at which tax rates change using a “chained” measure of inflation rather than the better-known consumer-price index.”
Jonathan Chait: “The genius of the Republican plan, if they pull it off, is that they are using hostage-taking in a novel fashion. They are using a 50-vote bill to pass the things Republicans care about, and setting up other, 60-vote bills to fix them. The partisan bill adds up on paper because it doesn’t include the cost of the bailout, which they can assume will be bipartisan.”
“Democrats can complain about this abuse of the rules, but the more productive course is to think of ways of imitating it. For instance: Suppose Democrats win control of Congress and the presidency, but cannot clear a filibuster (and also lack the votes to eliminate it). For instance: What if they decide to pay for an expanded Medicaid or Medicare buy-in plan by imposing a really gigantic tax hike on the rich — higher than even Democrats would like to see? Like a 90 percent top tax rate? Then they can invite Republicans to join them in a follow-up bill to cut that rate back down to a reasonable level.”
“If the rule is that majority-only bills have to add up, but bipartisan bills can increase the deficit all they want, then you can offload the costs of your bills by creating incentives for the other party to join in. In the short run, Republicans may have figured out a way around budget rules. In the long run, Democrats can do the same thing.”
Los Angeles Times: “Even as Senate leaders seek to enhance their tax package to make it more attractive to middle-class Americans, they are proposing making the new individual benefits expire at the end of 2025 in an effort to avoid adding to the long-term federal deficit.”
“Proposed cuts to corporate taxes would be permanent, under the revised Senate plan.”
First Read: “But even if the legislation does pass (and it seems like Senate Republicans are doing whatever it takes to pass it) they won’t have an easy time selling it to the American public. Higher premiums, fewer who are insured, tax cuts for corporations, estate-tax repeal for the wealthiest of Americans – the TV ad attacks in 2018 are easy to envision.”
“And pairing repeal of the individual mandate makes it all but impossible to get some Senate Democrats (West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly) to support the GOP’s tax plan. And we’ve seen how partisan legislation plays with the American public at the ballot box.”
“Bottom line: Senate Republicans may have solved their math problem by repealing the individual mandate, but they’ve now added other problems to their tax plan – a week after health care was the most important issue in Virginia’s gubernatorial election, per the exit poll, and after Maine easily passed Medicaid expansion. What’s more, only 27 percent of Americans approve of President Trump’s handling of health care, according to last month’s NBC/WSJ poll.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 56% of voters think President Trump and the company he built will benefit from proposed changes to the tax code, but fewer than three in 10 expect those changes to help them.
“Senate Republican leaders have decided to include a major change to their fast-moving tax cut bill that would repeal a key plank of the Affordable Care Act, trying to accomplish two of their top domestic priorities in a single piece of legislation,” the Washington Post reports.
“Republicans had so far resisted making the change, worried that injecting health care politics into the process could imperil the tax bill, but many of their members have supported the idea and they appear on the verge of including it.”
New York Times: “Repealing the so-called individual mandate, as President Trump had urged, would help Republicans with the difficult math problem they face in refining their tax plan. But it also risks reigniting the contentious debate over health care that Republicans found themselves mired in for much of the year.”
Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson: “Much of the debate over the Republican House and Senate tax plans has centered on how they will shift income toward the affluent. But there is a second kind of redistribution in the plans — from Democratic blue states to Republican red states.”
“Call it the Republican two-step: redistribute upward, then sideways. The biggest beneficiaries are corporations and the rich regardless of where they are. But under the Republican plans, half of these big cuts have to be paid for in the first 10 years (the other half will be added to the national debt, increasing it by $1.5 trillion). And these ‘pay-fors,’ as they’re called, are predominantly aimed at blue states.”
“A full analysis of the economic effects of the House tax bill isn’t available yet, according to a Congressional Budget Office document released on Monday. It’s not clear if such an estimate will be ready before the House votes later this week,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: Haste on tax measures may leave a trail of loopholes.
Playbook: “With the Roy Moore controversy continuing to rage, Republicans in Washington are looking to return to more comfortable territory this week — tax reform. After months of work, the House is expected to pass its overhaul of the tax code while the Senate Finance Committee is slated to pass their own version. The forward progress is welcomed by the White House and GOP operatives who believe passing a tax package before the midterm elections is even more essential to holding their majorities in Congress than it was just a week ago.”
“Nothing is over in Washington until it is over. There are still massive differences in the House and Senate bills and it’s unclear how Republicans will find a path forward on key issues like state and local tax deductions. So Republicans could find themselves one step forward, two steps back when it comes to final passage.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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