‘No budget, no tax reform’: GOP faces reality of remaining agenda
WASHINGTON — “Clearly, no budget, no tax reform.”
That comment made by House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady on Thursday, and then again for good measure on Monday, is the primary selling point on which House Republican leaders are hoping to whip up enough support to pass their fiscal 2018 budget resolution. Yet that pitch has done little to appease the naysayers.
With the budget still lacking the needed votes, some GOP tax writers are concerned about the future of the yearslong goal to rewrite the tax code. But most of that concern remains shrouded in a cloud of optimism. “I’m confident there are 218 Republicans in the House who came here to do bold, progrowth tax reform,” Brady said.
The Woodlands Republican is just one of many members who have said they believe the desire to overhaul the tax code will push enough GOP lawmakers to ultimately vote for the budget resolution. However, even if sufficient support were to materialize, a vote before the House departs at the end of the week for its summer recess appears unlikely.
The House GOP budget includes reconciliation instructions for a deficitneutral tax overhaul, as well as $203 billion in cuts to mandatory spending. If the House and Senate both pass and reconcile their budgets with a set of reconciliation instructions, they can use the resulting process to fast-track a tax overhaul without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate and rely solely on GOP votes.
Without the budget reconciliation process that allows for a simple-majority vote in the Senate, Republicans would need bipartisan cooperation on a tax plan to ensure its passage. GOP leaders have effectively ruled out that option.
However, conservatives, mostly from the hardline conservative House Freedom Caucus, have remained opposed to the budget resolution because they feel the reconciliation instructions do not provide a high enough target for mandatory spending cuts and because they want more details.