How Republicans rallied together to deliver a tax cut

WASHINGTON — The sting of failure on health care still lingered in the Senate on Aug. 3, when Mitch Mcconnell, the majority leader, summoned the Republican members of the Budget Committee to his office. We need to pass a tax bill this fall, Mcconnell told his colleagues, and we need a budget that allows us to do that.

There was no dissent.

Within two months, party leaders had hammered out a budget that steamrolled their previous concerns over adding to the federal budget deficit, in order to pave the way for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. In rapid order, the budget passed the Senate, then the House, putting Republicans on track to deliver a tax bill at breakneck speed to President Donald Trump’s desk by Christmas.

The $1.5 trillion bill represents the most sweeping overhaul of the U.S. tax code in decades, delivering deep and permanent cuts to corporations and temporary tax cuts to individuals. Early Wednesday morning, Republicans claimed victory as the Senate voted 51-48 to pass the bill, which the House passed on Tuesday, 227-203.

But in many ways, the bill represents a political and economic gamble for Republicans. A majority of Americans oppose it, and relatively few believe they will benefit personally from it, polls show. Economic analyses predict it will add more than $1 trillion to budget deficits over the next decade, an amount that would betray the party’s long-standing messaging that mounting federal debt will sap economic growth.

Republicans spurned those concerns, rallying around what has been the animating ideology of their party since the Reagan era: that tax cuts will drive faster growth and national prosperity. More immediately, they followed an overwhelming desire to notch a legislative “win” for the president, their donors, the restless voters of their party base and for their own political fortunes.

There were crucial steps that ensured passage, including a deficit bargain struck between Sens. Patrick Toomey and Bob Corker in September, pressure from Trump on a controversial push to tweak retirement savings in the bill and, in the Senate, an early and crucial endorsement from John Mccain of Arizona, the Republican wild card whose late defection killed the health care

TOM BRENNER / THE NEW YORK TIMES Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., speaks alongside fellow Republicans after the Senate passed the Republican tax bill on Capitol Hill in Washington. There never was, in the minds of Republican leaders, doubt the tax bill would pass — not...