Small business group tries to pressure Lankford on tax reform
A small business group has targeted U.S. Sen. James Lankford with television ads in Oklahoma City and Tulsa in hopes of steering him away from a tax reform bill.
Businesses for Responsible Tax Reform says it has spent more than $100,000 to pressure Lankford, R-Oklahoma City, into voting against Republican attempts at tax cuts.
In the 30-second ad, the senator is seen previously making dire warnings about the national debt and deficit. In one clip, he bluntly states, “I did not come to Congress to raise more debt.”
Afterward, a narrator argues Lankford’s antidebt statements should lead him to oppose the Senate bill, which is likely to come up for a vote in the next few weeks. Lankford’s office said Monday that he supports tax reform in general but is still undecided on the bill.
In a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, Lankford praised elements of the Senate bill, saying a cut in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent will deter companies from moving overseas and doubling the standard deduction will be “a great help” to many families. He also warned, as he has before, about the need to deal with the nation’s debt and deficits.
“We can’t ignore that reality,” Lankford said, “and one of the things that I’m still going through in the proposal, that we’re working through right now, are things that are unrealistic in the proposal. Because at the end of the day, we have to get the economy growing again, but we’ve got to deal with half a trillion dollars in overspending from this government right now.”
Earlier this month, Lankford was more straight-forward, telling MSNBC that he would vote against tax cuts that increase the national debt. Since those comments, opponents of Congress’s tax reform efforts have homed in on the Oklahoma senator as a possible ally.
If three Republicans join all Democrats in opposition, the bill cannot pass the Senate.
Businesses for Responsible Tax Reform opposes the Senate bill because they believe it unfairly helps major corporations to the detriment of small businesses. Their ad buy this week is targeting three fiscally conservative Republican senators who have warned against increasing the national debt: Lankford, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
“We will use all the means available to us to make sure Americans know the consequences of this poorly conceived and unfair reform,” said Ron Busby, the group’s co-chair. “Lawmakers need to keep the promises they made to voters not to increase the deficit, and certainly not do it to help big businesses get even more of a leg up on small firms.”
Both the House and Senate tax reform bills cut taxes by about $1.5 trillion but do not cut government spending or raise other revenue to offset the cuts. The Congressional Budget Office anticipates the bills would add about $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. The Joint Committee on Taxation reached a similar conclusion. The conservative Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget placed the number at $1.7 trillion.
The House passed its own tax reform bill last week along party lines, with unanimous support from Oklahoma’s five U.S. House members, all of whom are Republicans. If the Senate passes its bill, a conference committee will then sort out the differences and write a compromise bill to be voted on by both chambers late this year or sometime next year.