It is unlikely that Congress will adopt new tax cuts any time soon



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Beyond that, it is not clear that there is a specific legislative proposal on Capitol Hill that would achieve the President's goal. And even if Republicans advocate tax cuts after the mid-term, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to impose a new tax cut on both Houses when lawmakers travel to Washington for a lame session before Congress resumed in January.

When Trump debuted with his new talking point, he sent Capitol Hill collaborators to understand what he meant, and then in the House they rushed to determine if they could – or should – write something that would regulate what the president was talking about. In the Senate, GOP officials said that calls and e-mails were sent to their counterparts in the House for advice this weekend, to discover that there was no one – nobody knew exactly what the president was referring to exactly.

White House officials were also caught off guard by the president's remarks. Some leaders of the economic and legislative teams spent the weekend and the beginning of the week trying to figure out where Trump got his new tone and answered confused calls from Capitol Hill's allies, according to two sources. close to the internal reaction. There was also the open question of whether there was still work to be done to formulate a new proposal or, as one source said, "it was just something that POTUS wanted to start in the conversation in the weeks leading up to the election. "

Certainly, in a Republican-controlled House, legislative proposals can be quickly adopted if they are prioritized, including bypassing the committee process altogether. But there are currently no plans to do this, councilors said, mainly because no one stopped talking about exactly what the president is talking about.

"Your hypothesis is as good as mine," said one of GOP's key collaborators at the House.

As to whether something could possibly happen?

"I guess," said the assistant. "But it's not like we did not have a lot of work to do after the elections."

Key Republican President Speaks

On Tuesday, Rep. Kevin Brady, a Texas Republican who chairs the House's powerful Ways and Means Committee, the body's in-house tax return, announced that he would work with the House of Commons. Trump administration to develop a plan consistent with what the President suggested, although he offered no guarantee on its success.

"We will continue to work with the White House and the Treasury over the coming weeks to develop an additional 10% tax cut on families and middle class workers, so that Republicans retain their seats in the House and Senate, "Brady said in a statement. declaration.

Trump quoted the president of the ways and means in his comments to the White House Tuesday afternoon, according to which the Republicans would reveal the details of the plan in the coming days.

"It will be a resolution, probably presented this week, at the end of the week or early next week," he said. "And Kevin Brady has been developing it, actually, for a while, and we've been working very hard on it for quite some time."

A congressional aide told CNN on Tuesday, before Trump's comments, that the details are unclear and recalled a slower schedule than that promised by Trump in recent days, adding, "Nobody knows how much it costs."

One of the potential hurdles to any new plan is that the House will focus primarily on two things when it comes back in November: the repercussions of the election and government funding.
It is unlikely that a new tax proposal presented by the President will get the support of the Democrats, especially if Democrats gain control of the House mid-term. And why the House GOP leaders – including outgoing Wisconsin President Paul Ryan – would like to pass a new, no-future tax cut in the Senate, as leadership battles unfold and dozens of retired or retired members beaten head for the exit. , is an unanswered question.

"Building on the success of the law on tax reduction and employment"

House Republicans have already proceeded to the tax reduction on the policy of their election year – it was the package "tax reform 2.0" that the House passed in September before suspending its work until 39, after the elections.

The House Ways and Means Committee has adopted this set of tax cuts as part of the legislative process. No work of this type has been done on the new Trump cuts – in fact, no project on the new tax reduction proposal, capitalized or not, at Capitol Hill, has been achieved at 10% or more , told CNN the main collaborators of the GOP. That's because they did not know that the president would ask for a new proposal, said the collaborators.

When asked for details of Trump's proposal earlier this week, the spokespersons for the office of the President and the Ways and Means Committee first referred all questions to the House. white.

"I can tell you that the success of the law on the reduction of the tax on employment and employment and the constant improvement of the tax code for working families and small American businesses are a constant interest, "said Ways and Means Committee spokesman Rob Damschen in a statement. A spokeswoman for Ryan forwarded CNN's questions to the White House.

Trump acknowledged Monday that Congress would not have time to vote for further tax cuts before the November 6th mid-session. "We will vote later, we will vote after the elections," he said.

When the House passed its tax package in September, which included the extended extension of the 2017 tax cuts for individuals, the GOP advisers clearly explained what they were doing: trying to give to their holder in danger another case on which to campaign.

The reason? There was no chance that the Senate would take over the package – it just did not get the votes. Unlike the 2017 tax recast, which only required a simple majority to be passed to the House due to the use of an arcane budget process as a legislative vehicle, the second round would require 60 votes to go forward according to the rules of the Senate. Senate assistants from both parties said the bill would be far from reaching that number.

But despite the fact that the Senate should not pass the tax package of the House before mid-term because it does not have the necessary votes to be passed, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said Monday suggested that the President would like to see his tax cut increase. the middle class included in this package.

"In the context of the 2.0 tax reform, whose initial elements were adopted by the House in September, the president would like to see an additional 10% tax reduction for middle-income families," he said. she said in a statement.

Only three Democrats in the House supported the second round of tax cuts, two of which – representatives Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – embarked on a tough campaign for Senate seats. The third was the representative Conor Lamb, a moderate Democrat who ran in a Pennsylvania district lightening a Republican.

"It's a topic of discussion"

The fact that the effort being undertaken was both known to be futile on the legislative front and proposed as a political tool for House Republicans shows how far Trump's new topic is out of the left field on Capitol Hill. He is basically asking for the same thing – but without any legislative work to support his new idea and in the middle of a deficit that has been shown to be skyrocketing.

Kyle Pomerleau, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a non-profit think-tank based in Washington, said it would be extremely unlikely that the president's decision would be passed before the middle of the period or during the lame period. .

"We have no details on a proposal, the Congress is not in session to debate or make proposals and even if details were to appear miraculously and that Congress was coming back to adopt the president's plan, the final problem is that it is very unlikely it will pass both houses of Congress, "said Pomerleau.

Larry Kudlow, the chief economic adviser to the president, said Tuesday that Trump was keeping his promises, but Kudlow also acknowledged that the proposed tax cuts may not materialize in the near term, saying "that may not come to fruition for a while. " But that's his goal. "

Given the heavy political burdens and political difficulties faced by the House's GOP leadership, it will seek to prevent the government from ending its operations by the December 7 deadline – the President ask him not to obtain significant funding for his project. border wall proposal – there is a limited appetite to go forward with anything more substantial, said aides, even though they left the door open for something if the The president's economic affairs team was sending something substantial to the Hill.

Prior to the introduction of Trump's new tax-cut idea, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky explained that his priorities for the lame congressional session covered the government and the government. appointment of more conservative judges for district and appellate courts, which is Republican in the Senate. made a record pace throughout the 115th Congress.

While House officials were more cautious about the future of the president's non-existent tax reduction proposal, Senate colleagues were less circumspect.

"This is a topic of discussion," said one of the GOP's leading aides in the Senate. "It's something you have to talk about before the election, nothing more."

A congressional aide also told CNN that Congress controlled the levers of taxation power "but that it gave the president a topic of discussion" during the election campaign.

This assistant added, "To Trump's credit, he has the ability to let things exist out of nowhere."

Kevin Liptak and Elizabeth Landers of CNN contributed to this report.

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