The on-again, off-again Obamacare mandate repeal in the Republicans' massive tax cuts for Donald Trump bill is (as of now) off. It's not included in either the House or Senate bills. Two Republican senators—Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME)—say they don't want to deal with any kind of Obamacare repeal in this bill, making the whip counting complicated. That's not stopping Trump, though.
"I am proud of the Rep. House & Senate for working so hard on cutting taxes {& reform.} We’re getting close!" Trump tweeted Monday morning. “Now, how about ending the unfair & highly unpopular Indiv Mandate in OCare & reducing taxes even further? Cut top rate to 35% w/all of the rest going to middle income cuts?"
The Congressional Budget Office looked at mandate repeal again last week. They estimate it would save some money, $338 billion, but would end up taking insurance away from 13 million people in the next decade. That’s not good. With that information in mind, the Senate begins its mark-up of the bill in the Finance Committee Monday afternoon, and House leadership is planning a floor vote on its version later this week. In addition to not having the individual mandate repeal, the House bill keeps the top income tax rate at 39.6 percent, giving all the breaks to the wealthy in other provisions.
We've been here before with Trump's Twitter fingers. Two weeks ago he tweeted out of the blue that the mandate repeal had to be in the bill. Two weeks later, he's still at it despite the fact that he's being ignored.
The last thing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell want is another massive failure, à la Trumpcare. It would be particularly bad to have that failure be on giving tax cuts to the rich, the thing they are really in office to accomplish. But Trump is giving oxygen to the Senate maniacs—Rand Paul (KY), Ted Cruz, (TX) and Tom Cotton (AR) who are still whining about Obamacare. These competing factions—egged on by Trump—are making our job of bringing this bill down that much easier. We did it on Trumpcare, we can do it on this.
The Republican tax giveaway to the super wealthy attacks students, universities, non-profits, blue states, homeowners, the sick and the disabled. Please, call your member of the House of Representatives at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.