McConnell Plans To Pass Tax Reform With Only GOP Votes

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced his intention to move forward on tax reform with no Democrat support. To advance the bill without a filibuster by Democrats, Republicans will need to use the Senate’s budget reconciliation process that requires only 51 votes for cloture.

“We will need to use reconciliation,” McConnell told reporters, adding that Democrats are “not interested in addressing” items that Republicans favor. McConnell referenced a letter signed by 45 of the 48 Senate Democrats in which they refused to consider tax plans that cut rates for “the top 1 percent” or that added to the deficit. At the same time, Democrats called for a bipartisan reform bill.

“I don’t think this is going to be 1986, when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code,” McConnell said. He added, “Democratic senators who did not sign the letter who may be open to pro-growth tax reform.”

Unlike healthcare reform, where no Democrats broke ranks to vote with Republicans, the failure of three Democrats to sign the letter on tax reform may represent an opening to Republicans. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) are all up for reelection in 2018 in states that Donald Trump won. They are expected to have tough re-election battles, which may inspire them to side with Republicans on the tax bill.

There are difficulties for the Republicans as well. McConnell faced heavy criticism from his own side for his heavy-handed tactics and secret drafting of the healthcare bill. The secrecy and rapid changes in the content of the bill apparently swayed some senators to vote against the Obamacare reform.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, recently told Politico that there was less disagreement among Republicans on tax reform than there had been on healthcare. Norquist claimed that the GOP was at “97 percent” agreement after the decision to drop the border adjustment tax on imports, adding, “It’s now a question of making it fit” within the rules for reconciliation bills.

Under Senate rules, reconciliations can be used to pass bills that increase the deficit, but, per the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, senators can still block bills that are projected to raise deficits beyond the period that the budget resolution covers. Because scoring by the Congressional Budget Office often predicts that tax cuts will add to the deficit, these changes may be required to be temporary, probably less than 10 years, in order to be enacted as a budget reconciliation.

If McConnell and congressional Republicans can avoid the mistakes and division that they experienced in the run-up to the healthcare vote, they stand a slightly better chance of enacting tax reform. If Republicans can split off some Democrat votes to pass a bipartisan bill it would be a major victory for the Trump Administration and one that is sorely needed.

Originally published on The Resurgent

GOP revolt blocked Boehner’s spending amendment

According to a report by Dick Morris, Republican rebels scuttled a last minute attempt by Speaker John Boehner attach an amendment to the fiscal cliff deal that would have tied spending cuts to the tax increases. If the amendment had passed, it would have sent the bill back to the senate which would have had to vote to accept or reject it.

Bloomberg and CBS News also reported on Boehner’s attempt to tie the tax increases to spending cuts. According to CBS, the amendment would have required 217 Republican votes to pass. The final bill garnered 85 Republican votes and was passed primarily with Democratic support.

Among the Georgia delegation, the vote largely followed party lines. Rep. John Barrow (D-12) crossed party lines to vote against the bill and Rep. John Lewis (D-5), whose wife recently passed away, did not vote.

If the amendment had passed, it is unlikely that it would have passed the senate and the fiscal stalemate would have continued. A Democratic leadership aide told CBS, “We will absolutely not take up the House bill if they change the bipartisan agreement reached in the Senate" and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Bloomberg, “My senators have gone home.”

The Republican opposition may have been due to unwillingness to accept any tax increases as part of a compromise to avert the fiscal cliff. However, on the Dec. 21 edition of the Michael Medved Show, even Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform agreed that compromising with President Obama on tax rates for the wealthy would not be considered a vote for a tax increase because taxes were already scheduled to go up.

“They made it clear because they had a previous vote to extend it [the Bush tax rates] for everybody in the country,” Norquist told Medved, “so the two votes taken together make it very clear, we wanted to extend it for everybody, but in order to get something to the senate and get it passed, let’s extend it for as many as they [the Democrats] will allow. I mean if somebody’s thrown anybody out of the lifeboat, it’s the Democratic senate and the Democratic president….”

The Republican revolt ended quickly as the same representatives who refused to follow Speaker Boehner in fighting for spending cuts on Tuesday reelected him to a second term as speaker on Thursday. Only 12 House Republicans failed to vote for Boehner.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/gop-revolt-blocked-boehner-spending-amendment?cid=db_articles