Campaign Action
The mess of a tax bill the Senate passed last week is a disaster, so full of errors and unintended loopholes and disastrous potential for so many. But it also represents great opportunity for some, especially the some who comprise the Republicans’ donor class. And they’ve sent their lobbyists to the Hill in droves to make sure they still get theirs when this bill emerges from the conference between the House and Senate.
Builders and real estate interests are pushing to save the mortgage interest deduction. Businesses are fighting to strip out a last-minute provision inserted into the Senate bill that would preserve the corporate alternative minimum tax. And a coalition of trade groups and local government leaders is urging Republicans not to cut the state and local tax deduction. […]
The American Institute of Architects, which is fighting for changes to the tax rate paid by so-called pass-through businesses, including many architecture firms, has drafted a specific strategy for influencing each conferee. The trade group started reaching out to its members in districts represented by the House conferees shortly after they were named this week and urging them to call their lawmakers. […]
The National Association of Home Builders started meeting with House conferees on Wednesday and plans to start running ads aimed at both House and Senate conferees. The trade group also sent a letter to the House conferees, urging them, among other things, to side with the Senate on the mortgage interest deduction and abandon the House bill's language, which would cap the deduction at $500,000 and eliminate it for second homes.
The big deal is going to be that corporate snafu from Senate Republicans, where they ended up eliminating the tax break corporations get for research and development when they had to reinstate the alternative minimum tax in their rush to get the bill passed. "'People are screaming bloody murder over that,' one House GOP member said on condition of anonymity to freely chat about the lobbying he's receiving." You know that Republicans are going to figure out a way to fix that.
In the middle of the night, Senate Republicans passed an extremely dangerous scam of a tax bill targeting millions of lower-and-middle income Americans. Call your member of the House representatives NOW at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose this bill.
There is a group, Americans Against Double Taxation, that's fighting for actual individual tax payers who aren't big donors. They're trying to preserve the state and local tax deductions and are running digital ads against nearly two dozen vulnerable House Republicans.
"She voted to cut your state and local tax deduction, raising taxes on Californians by $12 billion," says the narrator of the ad targeting Rep. Mimi Walters (R-Calif.), who represents an Orange County district that Hillary Clinton carried last year. "And while you pay more, corporations and billionaires get huge tax breaks."
Let's amplify that message. You know which lobbyists are going to win in the conference committee rewriting the bill—the big donors and corporations. It's the members of the House whose constituents will be harmed the most by this who can still kill this thing.