Congress is trying to ram through a bill that would reshape the U.S. economy in just a few short weeks, but its leaders have kept the plan shrouded in secrecy and released not a word of legislative text.
Sound familiar? The GOP is handling its tax-overhaul rollout in almost the exact way it did Obamacare and hoping for a different result. The Republicans’ seven-year quest to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act imploded as they tried to bypass Democrats but failed to rally their own forces amid unresolved policy disputes.
Already, many lawmakers are making similar complaints about the tax effort -- saying they need more details before they can commit to the audacious timeline House Speaker Paul Ryan has vowed to meet: He wants a bill through the House by Thanksgiving. Rank-and-file members fear they’ll have two choices: Swallow whatever bill their leaders devise or blow their self-imposed deadline of sending a bill to President Donald Trump before year’s end.
“We don’t know the brackets,” Representative Chris Collins of New York, a Trump ally, told reporters after a Republican conference meeting Tuesday. “We don’t know where we are on estate taxes. We don’t know where we are on” the state and local tax deduction -- a contentious issue for members like Collins from high-tax states.
“We don’t know where we are on the size of the child tax credit,” he continued. “We don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know, we don’t know.”
In the Senate, meanwhile, bad blood between a pair of Republicans and Trump escalated on Tuesday -- bringing tumult as the president sought to reach out to senators during a Capitol Hill visit. Trump and Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee reignited their feud, hurling insults over Twitter. Later, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has also sparred with Trump, shocked the political world by announcing he won’t seek reelection in 2018 -- and then slammed his party for accommodating the president.
“I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it,” Flake said on the Senate floor. “By now, we all know better than that.”
How U.S. Republicans Clash on Their Own Tax Plan
If the similarities to the Obamacare debacle seem haunting, GOP leaders are betting they won’t be stymied this time -- if only because of the party’s sheer need for a legislative victory. There’s another key difference: Republicans say they learned from the health-care fight that they had to come up with a unified tax plan, along with the White House, before either chamber began drafting legislation.
The Sept. 27 tax framework released by the White House and GOP leaders sought to lay out some clear goals -- including setting a corporate tax rate of 20 percent and cutting tax rates on businesses and individuals -- but it doesn’t offer answers to some of the toughest questions, such as where to set income brackets or which corporate tax breaks to end.