A study by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center found that most middle-income families would enjoy after-tax gains under the GOP framework, but that taxes would go up for almost 30 percent of people making $50,000 to $150,000. House tax-writing Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady blasted that study as “a work of fiction that Stephen King would’ve been proud of.” Trump’s chief economist Kevin Hassett said it used “imagined numbers” to fill in the blanks. The study said it used brackets outlined in the House GOP tax blueprint released in 2016.

Asked about the White House’s position that the tax plan is aimed at helping the middle class, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was blunt: “I’ve never heard such a fraudulent statement.”

Kennedy said he, along with his fellow senators, are anxious to see the real numbers that will be used for the income brackets.

Those details are still being worked out and will be set by House and Senate tax-writing committees, White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said during a Fox News interview that aired Sunday. “We’ve not released the details,” he said. “Why? Not because they’re hidden. We don’t have them in a vault someplace. We simply haven’t settled on them yet.”

Child Tax Credit

Kyle Pomerleau, a federal tax expert with the Tax Foundation, said Republicans have two key options to mitigate possible tax hikes for middle-income earners. The first is to raise the income threshold subject to the lowest tax rate to make sure it applies as broadly as possible. The second is to boost the size of the child tax credit, which is currently $1,000 per child under 17. He said a $500 increase may be a starting point, but that may rise in the Senate, where Florida’s Marco Rubio and Utah’s Mike Lee have proposed a $1,000 boost.

That could ease some of the concerns about tax increases on the middle class, Pomerleau said. Leaving those kinds of questions unanswered in the framework was “a double-edged sword” for congressional leaders, he said: On one hand it helped stir fears about a middle-class tax hike, but on the other hand, it provided “leeway to the committees to negotiate.”

House members in high-tax states -- such as Collins and New Jersey’s Leonard Lance -- want to offer further tax relief by preserving the $1.3 trillion state and local tax deduction, saying it would hit middle-income people they represent. Others want to eliminate that tax break, as the framework suggests, to help pay for rate cuts. Not all Republicans agree.

“It may be an important consideration for folks in high-tax states, but I’m not sure how y’all want me to sell to the South Carolinian that he or she should subsidize the taxes for folks in New York or California,” said Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who sits on the tax-writing Finance Committee.

Capital Gains