Republicans at risk at home say no to new tax bill

The White House and the main congressional Republicans want to push for a House vote on a second round of tax cuts ahead of schedule, hoping to strengthen their economic position with voters, but they face a opposition within their own party.

GOP leaders conceived of the second bill as a victory message that would put Democrats on the front line, forcing them to vote against middle-class tax breaks. But the concerns about the bill come largely from the Republican side, mainly from members struggling to retain seats in the suburbs where President Donald Trump is the most unpopular – and which are essential for the GOP to maintain its position. majority.

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A dozen House Republicans, all but one of the states of California, New Jersey and New York, voted against the tax law in December because it caps national and local tax deductions. tax increases. Too many of their constituents.

Some of the GOP legislators have openly stated that they would prefer to leave the tax issue alone, while Congress is wondering how to fund the government and that the House could vote on health measures that could be more politically beneficial. for vulnerable businesses in place. "If we had to get it here in the House, it would be a futile exercise, because it could never pass in the Senate," said Friday the representative Leonard Lance of New Jersey, opposed to the first bill.

Leaders in the House of Representatives will unveil the second tax bill this week. Written by House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the bill proposes to permanently lower the Republicans' tax rate, while introducing new measures to help families save money stimulate innovation for businesses.

House leaders and White House officials hope that he can at least go through this chamber before the elections. The Senate is not expected to vote on the bill in 2018, given that the focus should be on the appointment of judges and the confirmation of the Supreme Court – and that the majority Mitch McConnell (R-Ky .) Simply is not allowed to vote.

Republican leaders "have certainly let us know from the outset that they would be ready to move forward in September," Brady told reporters last week. "He is at full steam."

GOP officials have long recognized that they can not integrate all of their priorities to a degree that would be the $ 1.5 trillion cut last year because no Democrats supported the bill. They adopted it with a narrow margin of vote using a budget measure called reconciliation, which required only a simple majority in the Senate, and who had long wanted to review the bill's amendments on the tax code side. These amendments must expire after 2025, while the changes to the corporation tax became permanent under the new law.

This time, the White House and the Treasury Department have largely retreated in the drafting of the bill, although Brady, President Donald Trump and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin have remained in close contact with the progress of the project of law. Ways and Means legislators also visited the White House in July to discuss the bill, and the committee is expected to announce the new measure on Thursday after issuing legislation earlier this week.

The main concern of the White House is that individual tax cuts are made permanent, said a Republican close to the White House, calling the other proposals "nickel and soda." Mnuchin and Ivanka Trump also visited Capitol Hill to discuss different parts of the bill, according to an administration official.

Shahira Knight, the new Director of Legislative Affairs at the White House, who helped draft the Republicans' first tax bill in close co-operation with top economic and lawmakers, will help bring this Bill 2.0 to the forefront. bedroom. expense invoices. Since the adoption of the first tax law, one of Trump's leading informal economic advisers, Larry Kudlow, has become director of the National Economic Council.

Some administration officials have expressed regret over the way in which the tax code has fallen under the Republican tax regime. "The part of the tax reform that was so important to me was really the business part," said former White House economic adviser Gary Cohn at a Washington event in June. "One thing that haunts me", however, is that Republicans have not been able to make permanent income tax cuts, he said.

Democrats have criticized the amount of share buybacks that followed tax law and maintained that the law did little to help the average worker, and they are likely to pick up these themes when discussing the second bill.

Democrats may have fled this fight in the past, as Republicans often refer to them as tax hikers. But these days, they are more than happy to revive the tax law of last year, which they insisted from the beginning to save businesses and the rich while leaving behind the middle class.

The fact that taxes are more equitable also appears in the polls. The new tax law was not the most political one that many Republicans expected when they were trying to hang on to the House, and they have been less popular since the beginning of the year.

The overview of House Republican's new bill also proposed a range of new tools for families to increase their savings, including creating a new universal savings account and facilitating the contribution to savings. individual retirement accounts.

Lawmakers and assistants from both parties say that it is possible for the retirement provisions to be adopted as part of an end-of-year fiscal agreement after the elections. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Senate Finance Chair, and Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, the first Democrat on the panel, have already joined bipartisan legislation on retirement savings.

"I think it's good. It certainly makes sense to make tax cuts permanent, but it's not urgent, because they do not expire for many years, "said Stephen Moore, Visiting Researcher at the Heritage Foundation and Informal Economic Advisor Trump campaign 2016. "I would still support the bill because it is probably a good thing for Republicans to always be on the offensive on tax cuts."