Rubio: GOP can’t just be country club party

Efforts to advocate for poor and middle classes get ignored.

As Republicans work to finalize a massive tax cut for businesses, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned his colleagues that the GOP is in danger of solidifying its image as the party that only cares about the very wealthy, which he dubbed the country club set.

“Good time to revisit a landmark 1977 speech given by President Ronald Reagan in which he called for a ‘New Republican Party’ that will not be and cannot be one limited to the country club-big business image,” he tweeted Friday morning. “The New Republican Party ... is going to have room for the man & the woman in the factories, for the farmer, for the cop on the beat.”

Rubio said there were “going to be problems” if the conference committee that is meeting to reconcile the differences between the House and Senate tax plans lowers the big business tax rate even further or scales back the Child Tax Credit, a key priority for Rubio throughout the debate.

Rubio tweeted “If #TaxReform conference weakens #ChildTaxCredit OR reduce corp cut but don’t make CTC refundable for working families, going to be problems.”

Senators will get one more chance to vote on the bill that comes out of the committee. At the moment, Republicans can only afford to lose one more vote. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has already said he won’t vote for it because he thinks it adds too much to the country’s already sizable debt.

While Rubio has emerged as a vocal champion for the working poor in the tax debate, he has always ended up voting the party line to advance the bill at every step of the process.

Rubio is upset that almost all of his Republican colleagues voted down a proposal he and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, put together to give more tax relief to the working poor by making more of the Child Tax Credit refundable, so lower-income families actually get money back from the government. To pay for it, Rubio and Lee suggested lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to about 21 percent, which would still be the largest tax cut for corporations in U.S. history.

“You’re telling me that if we have a corporate tax rate that goes from 35 percent to 20.94 percent, that’s going to hurt growth?” Rubio said on the floor of the Senate.

The pitch failed, but Rubio voted for the final Senate bill anyway.

His tweets come at a critical time for the tax bill. As the conference committee begins its work, there is intense lobbying from big businesses and wealthy donors, but it is less clear who is fighting for the middle class in the final stages of the process.

As The Washington Post has reported, several prominent billionaires have spoken with President Donald Trump this week to try to get changes to the bill that favor them, such as getting a larger deduction for the state and local taxes they pay. Separately, 54 Republican lawmakers signed a letter to party leaders calling for the final bill to completely repeal the estate tax, which currently applies only to estates worth more than $5.5 million. The House bill includes full repeal, while the Senate bill changes the tax so fewer people would pay it and those who do would pay less.

Chief executives have also been in touch with key senators and White House officials to advocate for keeping the business tax rate at 20 percent in the final bill. The big business tax cut from 35 percent to 20 percent would be the largest rate drop for corporations in U.S. history.

Neither Rubio, Lee nor Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the three Republican senators who pushed the hardest for changes to the Senate tax bill that would benefit the middle class, are members of the conference committee. The bill has favored the wealthy more and more with almost every tweak so far.

The bill remains deeply unpopular with the public with a solid majority of Americans (about 70 percent according to a CBS poll out this week) believing it favors the rich and corporations. While the bill does give tax cuts to many middle class families in the coming years, the wealthy benefit substantially more. Families earning $300,000 to $750,000 see the biggest percentage boost to their after-tax incomes, according to the Tax Policy Center. The bill is also projected to add $1 trillion to the debt, even after accounting for economic growth, Congress’ official scorekeeper says, suggesting Republicans are abandoning debt concerns after years of complaining that the country’s debt was too high.

The GOP tax bill has been heavily criticized for giving corporations and the wealthy a substantial reduction in taxes while doing far less for the middle class and almost nothing for the 44 percent of families that currently do not pay federal income taxes.

Rubio tweeted Friday that too often Republicans have dismissed the fact that 60 percent of the households that don’t pay federal income taxes do pay payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. His proposal with Lee would have helped those people.

‘You’re telling me that if we have a corporate tax rate that goes from 35% to 20.94%, that’s going to hurt growth?’

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

Sen. Marco Rubio has advocated for working poor in the tax debate.