CHOP CHOP!
2 GOPers sign on as tax plan rushes toward OK
REPUBLICANS appeared ready to bring their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul across the finish line as Democrats on Monday frantically sought ways to block it.
With the House expected to vote on the measure Tuesday, GOP leaders appeared to have enough votes in both houses to win approval and hand President Trump his first major legislative victory.
Bolstering the bill’s chances were announcements by Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine that they would support it.
“Just finished reading the final Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. It will cut taxes for working Utah families,” Lee said in a tweet. “I will proudly vote for it.”
The commitments from Lee and Collins left Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake as the only Republican senator on the fence.
With Sen. John McCain in Arizona fighting brain cancer, Republican leaders needed at least 49 of their remaining 51 senators to support the measure or it will fail.
Senate Republicans also moved Monday to squash a controversy that erupted when it was reported over the weekend that a provision benefitting real estate investors — including President Trump and Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker — had been quietly inserted into the final tax bill.
Corker dropped his previous opposition to the bill last week, leading some Democrats to dub the provision the “Corker kickback.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (RUtah) said Corker had nothing to do with it.
“It takes a great deal of imagination — and likely no small amount of partisanship — to argue that a provision that has been public for over a month, debated on the floor of the House of Representatives, included in a House-passed bill, and identified by JCT (Joint Committee on Taxation) as an issue requiring a compromise between conferees is somehow a covert and lastminute addition to the conference report,” Hatch said in a letter to Corker.
Democrats, meanwhile, tried to scuttle the bill, with New York Gov. Cuomo suggesting that the party should threaten to withhold support for spending measures that would keep the government open unless Republican leaders pull back the tax bill.
“If the government is about to do a terrible thing, sometimes a shutdown is preferable,” Cuomo (right) said.
Rep. Chris Collins — whom Cuomo has accused of betraying his constituents with his support for the bill — said, “It is shocking that crybaby Andrew Cuomo is advocating for a shutdown of the federal government because he didn’t get his way on denying New York’s working families a tax cut of $100 or more in their monthly paychecks.”
The Democratic efforts came as a new report from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget showed that the bill could cost as much as $2.2 trillion if tax cuts that are now temporary in the legislation are eventually made permanent.
Cuomo has been a fierce critic of the tax bill, especially a provision that limits the state and local tax deduction. His budget director also warned Monday that the elimination of the Obamacare insurance mandate, which is also part of the bill, will likely drive up state Medicaid costs. “It’s red states pillaging blue states in an economic civil war,” said Cuomo, who predicted that Republicans will experience a backlash from voters if the bill passes.