Race to pass bill, avoid shutdown
Republicans plan to vote on tax reform, then seek budget deal
Republicans return to Congress today facing a packed agenda with little time to enact it, as party leaders aim to quickly pass their massive tax plan and then cut a budget deal with Democrats before the end of Saturday to avert a government shutdown.
The Republicans’ tight timing on taxes is self-imposed. Republican lawmakers have for months been racing to beat US President Donald Trump’s demand that they send him tax legislation before Christmas — a timeline that gained new urgency when Alabama Democrat Doug Jones won the Senate seat currently occupied by Republican Senator Luther Strange.
GOP leaders aim to hold tax votes early in the week before moving to the budget bill. They need Democrats’ help to pass the budget measure through the Senate, and thus far they’ve made little progress bringing them aboard amid disagreements over spending levels, protection from deportation for certain undocumented immigrants and a federal health insurance programme for low-income children.
The outcome of the tax votes, however, appears certain after Republican senators Marco Rubio and Bob Corker pledged their support. The duo gave the GOP the Senate votes to pass the bill, even as Senator John McCain, (R), who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, returned to Arizona and is not expected to vote on the final bill.
The measure’s passage would mark the first major legislative accomplishment for Trump and party leaders in a year of stumbles, the products of months of negotiations and a string of late adjustments aimed at winning over the party’s final few holdouts.
Republicans promised benefits to the middle class both from tax cuts and ensuing economic growth. “We think as a result of lowering business taxes, wages will go up. So, this is a huge opportunity for creating jobs, for creating tax cuts for working families,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Congress’ nonpartisan tax analysts, joining several other nonpartisan assessments, concluded that the bulk of the bill’s benefits would go to the wealthy and corporations. Those analyses have also projected that the cuts will produce far less economic growth than Trump and Administration officials are promising.
The plan would make the biggest changes to the tax code in three decades, most significantly dropping the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 21 per cent. The bill also would cut taxes for nearly all individuals, giving the biggest trims to the wealthy but in most cases providing some relief for the middle class.
Polls suggest the public is sceptical of major gains for the middle class. A recent CBS poll found that 76 per cent of Americans believe the bill’s biggest benefits would go to the largest corporations. “What we are seeing here is a real massive attack on the middle class,” Senator Bernie Sanders, (I).