House and Senate Republicans continue to move toward passing separate versions of their precious tax plan, but much remains mysterious. Like how the Senate will comply with the Byrd Rule, which requires that their bill not add to the deficit after 10 years—a bar it currently doesn’t meet. And how the House and Senate will find common ground after passing their separate bills. And exactly how many families will see tax increases.
The House is moving toward a vote, possibly as soon as Thursday, while the Senate Finance Committee is struggling to project optimism:
Orrin Hatch, the panel’s chairman, acknowledged on Monday there’s still work to do. He’s expected to release a modified chairman’s mark on Tuesday that may aim for better numbers.
But how the revised version would bridge the gap remains a mystery.
Even Hatch seems unsure: “I know what’s in it but they may change it on me,” he said after his committee recessed Monday evening.
Hatch isn’t the only one facing uncertainty. Yet another analysis of the tax plan’s likely outcome (this one by the Joint Committee on Taxation) has produced yet another estimate of how many American families, and which ones, would face tax increases:
The analysis found that the Senate measure would actually increase taxes in 2019 for 13.8 million households earning less than $200,000 a year. That group, about 10 percent of all U.S. taxpayers, would face tax increases of $100 to $500 in 2019. There also would be increases greater than $500 for a number of taxpayers, especially those with incomes between $75,000 and $200,000. By 2025, 21.4 million households would have steeper tax bills.
And Republicans in both House and Senate have to be gritting their teeth after Donald Trump once again announced his own thoughts, different from the bills they’re writing, via Twitter:
Trump's latest tweet injected a dose of uncertainty into the process as the Republicans try to deliver on his top legislative priority. He commended GOP leaders for getting the tax legislation closer to passage in recent weeks and then said, "Cut top rate to 35% w/all of the rest going to middle income cuts?"
That puts him at odds with the House legislation that leaves the top rate at 39.6 percent and the Senate bill as written, with the top rate at 38.5 percent.
But while Trump isn’t doing congressional Republicans any favors in expectation-setting or helping them to focus, he’ll sign any bill they put in front of him that’s labeled tax cuts. So the real action remains in Congress.