Remember how Donald Trump was just champing at the bit to get moving on tax reform? Well, Bloomberg News has a look at how all those big plans are really coming together now.
Republican congressional leaders don’t expect to release a joint tax plan with the White House next month, and they’ll rely instead on House and Senate tax-writing committees to solve the big tax questions that remain unanswered, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The so-called Big Six -- made up of White House officials and congressional leaders involved in tax negotiations -- jointly released a two-page statement in July that outlined a broad set of agreed-upon tax principles. Specifics, including such basic matters as where to set the corporate tax rate and how to set up individual tax brackets, have yet to emerge.
Right. That "broad set" of principles billed as a “plan” was a bunch of bullet points.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during a July interview on ABC that the objective was to have “a full-blown release of the plan” in the beginning of September. Then, a White House official said earlier this month that September would see the release of a new tax document that would provide at least some additional detail.
Right. "Full-blown" got reduced down to "at least some additional detail."
At Thursday's press briefing, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it a "huge priority" and said it would certainly be "a big focus" in the fall, adding:
We're going to look at a lot of different ways in which to talk about that and present that to the American people working with Congress to make sure that that happens.
Not so many months ago, the White House planned to sideline Republican lawmakers on tax reform and handle it internally after witnessing their dismal effort to repeal Obamacare.
But now taxes are up to Congress because Trump's White House wouldn't know how to lead its way out of a paper bag. Oh, and the Don is still so obsessed with repealing health care that he’s taking potshots at a man presently battling life-threatening brain cancer in live televised speeches. Classy.
