Get It Done
It looks like the Republican Congress may be capable of delivering on its promises after all: With the Senate’s vote on the tax-cut bill in the early hours Saturday, lawmakers are close to passing the reform into law before Christmas.
Plenty remains to be done: Leadership must reconcile the House and Senate plans, then each chamber has to pass the consensus bill before President Trump can sign it into law. That means at least one more round of Senate agonizing, and with a tight vote also likely in the House.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s quip about assembling a bill that can pass to solving a Rubik’s Cube still holds: Any concessions his team makes to the House risks losing a senator — and McConnell only has one vote to spare.
But Republicans know they have to show they can deliver, or they’re toast in the 2018 midterm elections: Democrats’ fury at losing to Trump last year guarantees they’ll be turning out on Election Day; GOP voters need some reason to show up, too.
More important: The tax cuts can finally get the economy truly booming again. Growth is already up to 3 percent or higher thanks to Trump’s deregulatory agenda, and to the optimism that’s replaced dread of what President Barack Obama might do to slam business.
But the nation needs better to make up for the slow-growth Obama years — expansion at the 4 percent-plus level to launch a jobs boom and end middle- and working-class wage stagnation.
Happily, the business cuts in the House and Senate bills are essentially what Trump campaigned on, designed by Larry Kudlow and other supplysiders to generate the big investments that allow for real gains for working Americans.
And no, it’s not all about big business: The 20 percent corporate tax rate is a bigger boon for small companies than large ones, which are better positioned to game the system. And the Senate’s improved treatment of taxes for non-corporate businesses is a huge plus for family-owned firms and other “small fry” who can’t afford big Washington lobbying shops.
Democrats and their media allies will continue their nonstop fearmongering: The boom the tax cuts will deliver is bad news for them, since it will debunk all their excuses about the Obama era as well as their hysteria about the GOP approach.
That is, it’ll do that if Congress can finish the job. That’s why the House plans to get the reconciliation process started Monday, and why McConnell is also eager to move to the final votes.
It’s prime time for Republicans to recall Ben Franklin’s dictum during the Founding: They’ve got to all hang together, or they’ll hang separately.