Progress on the Republican tax bill is slow going. Slow enough that at least some seasoned observers think it's close to dead, given how far they are behind the trajectory of, say, the 2001 tax cut bill. And almost everyone agrees that tax reform is incredibly difficult, and basically just can't happen on a straight partisan vote.
And yet the logic of why they really should pass something is very strong. Republicans love tax cuts! Which drives Bloomberg's Joe Weisenthal to ask more or less the same question I asked last week:
Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart Why don't they just pass a tax cut? Reduce all the numbers by a few percentage points. Give people more money, claim victory, and move on. Twitter: Joe Weisenthal on Twitter
So what is going to determine whether Republicans really manage to pass something significant during the current Congress?
How soon can they drop their larger ambitions?
Remember: Tax cuts easy, tax reform hard. Closing loopholes equals losing votes, and without any Democrats (and assuming Republicans can pass a budget resolution which would allow them to use reconciliation procedures) Republicans can only afford to lose, as of today, 23 votes in the House and 2 in the Senate. Similarly, while it might be nice to achieve permanent changes, the only realistic ambition available to them are tax cuts that sunset in 10 years. The longer they hold out hope for something more ambitious, the less time they'll have once they face reality.
How unpopular will their bill be?
Democrats will hit hard over a bill in which the bulk of tax cuts go to the rich -- which will be the case in almost any plausible Republican tax bill. Having an unpopular president in the White House can't help. The bill polls badly now and is likely to stay that way. My guess is that won't stop too many Republicans from voting for something which almost all of them will sincerely support and which will be overwhelmingly popular among their supporters. But the more unpopular the bill gets, the more they'll shy away from voting on it close to the election, and therefore the closer the deadline to get it done.
Do any Republicans really care about the deficit?
I'm fairly confident that most do not. Rhetoric aside, they've never really acted as if they do. They consistently support lower taxes, lower spending for many domestic government programs, and higher spending on defense and some other programs, and have rarely supported giving any of their other preferences up in order to lower federal budget deficits. Mostly, they rely on fantasies -- that tax cuts will pay for themselves, or that tax cuts will produce lower spending in the future -- to pay lip service to the whole idea. But some of them may really prefer lower deficits to lower taxes, in which case they would presumably vote against any large tax cut bill.