Trump promises big tax cuts, but Republicans talk about scaling back

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump promised the largest tax cut in history, but as he hit the road Wednesday to promote the plan, Republicans in Congress were quietly discussing scaling back key provisions in an effort to deliver the top White House priority.

There’s already talk that the cornerstone of the GOP proposal — a dramatically reduced20 percent corporate tax rate that Mr. Trump has called a “red line” — may slip to 22 percent or 23 percent, those familiar with negotiations said.

Mr. Trump had originally promised a 15 percent rate for corporations. But Republicans are running into resistance from lawmakers and lobbyists who want to preserve deductions and loopholes that were targeted for elimination under the White House plan to offset the massive corporate cut from the current35 percent rate.

Some Republicans are also pushing back against other parts of the president’s plan, such as scrapping the estate tax for the rich and eliminating deductions for state and local taxes, which would hurt residents in high-tax states like California and New York.

“This is really almost like a life or death issue for districts like mine,” says Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who represents a district on New York’s Long Island. “This cannot be called a rich district. It serves a lot of middle income people.”

At an evening rally in Harrisburg, Mr. Trump said the corporate rate would be “no more than 20 percent.” But earlier this week, he acknowledged that changes may lie ahead. “We’ll be adjusting a little bit over the next few weeks to make it even stronger,” he said.

Negotiators say changes will be needed if Republicans, who can afford to lose only two votes in the Senate and about 20 in the House if no Democrats join in support, hope to avoid another embarrassing defeat like the collapse of their Obamacare repeal plan.

Fiscally conservative Republicans will be the hardest to win over because the GOP tax plan has been estimated by some outside groups to add more than $2 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.

Republicans are racing to pass their tax overhaul by the end of the year, hoping to give the economy a boost and quiet complaints that they have accomplished little with the party’s hold on the White House and Congress.

Yet even as Mr. Trump and top Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Vice President Mike Pence, talk up the tax plan in whistle-stop tours across the nation, it remains in flux, more of a concept than a proposal. Actual legislation remains weeks away.

“Everything is fluid right now,” said one business lobbyist, granted anonymity to discuss the private talks, adding that there are “realistic tensions” over the details.

Trump attacks NBC

Mr. Trump on Wednesday lashed out over a critical news report and escalated his previous attacks on the press by seeming to suggest that news organizations he disagrees with be shut down, alarming free-speech advocates.

The president’s outbursts, which marred an Oval Office meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, came in reaction to an NBC News report that he had pushed senior aides in July for a major expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump called the report “pure fiction made up to demean” himand questioned whether networks that report “Fake News” should be stripped of their broadcasting licenses — although the FCC licenses individual stations and affiliates, not networks.

“It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write, ”Mr. Trump said later.

Nielsen tabbed for DHS

Mr. Trump announced Wednesday that he intends to nominate Kirstjen Nielsen, a cybersecurity expert and deputy White House chief of staff, to be secretary of homeland security, a job left vacant when John Kelly departed to become White House chief of staff in July.

The White House, in a statement, described Ms. Nielsen as having “extensive professional experience in the areas of homeland security policy and strategy, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure, and emergency management.”

Ms. Nielsen is a longtime Department of Homeland Security official who served as Mr. Kelly’s chief of staff when he was DHS secretary and accompanied him to the White-House as his deputy.

Next move on health care

Mr. Trump, after failing to repeal the Affordable Care Act in Congress, will act on his own to relax health care standards on small businesses that band together to buy health insurance and may take steps to allow the sale of other health plans that skirt the health law’s requirements.

An executive order is expected Thursday.