As of Tuesday morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell does not have the votes for the tax cuts bill he's trying to ram through this week, making it possible that it will slip into next week, giving us more time to fight it. On Tuesday, popular vote loser Donald Trump will meet with Republicans in their weekly lunch. Directly following that, the Budget Committee is meeting and may or may not try to vote the bill out of committee. Democrats are united against it, Republicans have a problem, or rather two problems.
- "High concern" about [Bob] Corker of Tennessee and [Ron] Johnson of Wisconsin: They're simply not on board yet, and they both have a vote in the Budget Committee—a vital procedural step scheduled for 2:30 p.m. today. […]
- A problem for McConnell & Co: Johnson and Corker sit on opposite ends of a Catch 22 seesaw: Johnson wants lots more money for "pass-through" businesses. But every extra dollar you give him is another dollar that will blow out the deficit and worry deficit hawks like Corker, Flake and McCain.
- A senior GOP aide: "It's unclear what exactly that Senator Johnson wants. ... It's potentially hundreds of billions of dollars."
Another handful of senators have signaled they are not on board yet—John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, and Steve Daines of Montana. Since only one of those, Collins, has made any noise at all about the harm the bill would cause to lower income people and her lone vote is expendable, the fixes leadership is looking at would make the bill even more unequal by rewarding wealthy business owners. That's the Johnson and Daines gambit.
At the heart of the debate is whether to more favorably treat small businesses and other so-called pass-through entities—businesses whose profits are distributed to their owners and taxed at rates for individuals. Seventy percent of pass-through income flows to the top 1 percent of American earners, according to research by Owen Zidar, an economist at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.
Jam your senators' phone lines at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.
That would be great for companies like the four in which Johnson has investments that provided income of at least $250,000 and as much as $2 million in 2016. Also benefiting here? Donald Trump, "who has investment stakes in roughly 500 entities that could be affected by the planned adjustments."
That's not going to win over Corker.
McConnell is on very shaky ground today in getting this passed, so we need to keep up the pressure. Call, particularly if you live in Tennessee, Arizona, Maine, or Alaska.