Tax plan meets GOP resistance
Republican measure would add $1.5 trillion to national debt over a decade
House Republicans rolled out a sweeping tax overhaul Thursday and were preparing to bring it up for a vote within weeks, even as some acknowledged their constituents could have to pay more, and some conservative interest groups objected to the cost.
Republican leaders touted savings for the average family and said lower rates and new write-offs for businesses would spur job creation to make up for more than $1.5 trillion in lost tax revenue.
President Donald Trump urged them to get him a bill to sign as soon as Thanksgiving. And many House conservatives, who earlier this year balked when a health care overhaul crafted in secret by their leaders was sprung on them as a finished product, were optimistic about quick action.
But Republicans from New York and New Jersey were angered their states
would be hurt by the elimination of the deduction for state income taxes and a new cap on the deduction for property taxes.
And even before Democrats and liberal groups could complain about the distribution of the benefits from the $1.5 trillion tax cut, some groups on the conservative end of the spectrum were sounding alarms.
Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, a group connected with the conservative Koch brothers, called the bill “dead on arrival” because it included a corporate tax provision aimed at overseas companies selling products into the United States that could raise costs for consumers.
Deficit hawks at the Concord Coalition said the bill was fiscally irresponsible because it would add $1.5 trillion to a national debt that was already due to grow by $10 trillion.
“True tax reform should aim to grow the economy without growing the debt,” said Robert L. Bixby, Concord’s executive director.
The interest groups representing homebuilders and Realtors, whose political contributions favor the GOP over Democrats, planned an all-out assault on the bill because of the cap on the property tax deduction and a new limit that caps the deduction for mortgage interest on new loans at $500,000.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that of the tax cuts in the plan, $1 trillion would go to businesses over the next 10 years, $200 billion would go to individuals, and $200 billion would go to estates as the current estate tax is phased out over six years.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the bill was “anti-senior” because it would eliminate the deduction for medical expenses. He also said that while families would no longer be able to deduct their state income taxes, businesses could continue to do so.
“This bill is about giving enough crumbs to the middle class to distract from the multitrillion-dollar giveaways to corporations that ship jobs overseas and the mega-wealthy,” Wyden said.