Don’t Bet against Tax and Health-Care Reform in 2017

Amid all the Russia controversy, Trump and the GOP Congress can get it done.

.. Look, the House has already passed a repeal and replace of Obamacare. And a Senate health-care working group led by Lamar Alexander and Ted Cruz is making progress resolving key issues between moderates and conservatives. There’s no reason why the AHCA can’t become law by the August recess.

And that opens the door for taxes.

.. Representative Peter Roskam, who chairs the tax-policy subcommittee, said this last week: “I’m of the view that 2017 is the year.” He thinks tax reform is easier than replacing Obamacare.

.. So following a markup, Ways and Means can report out a bill. And because prosperity is America’s Number One issue, it will pass the floor relatively easily. And that will put pressure on the Senate to get moving.

.. the very core of the tax bill is a simple three steps:

  1. a deep corporate-tax-rate cut,
  2. immediate expensing for new equipment of all kinds, and
  3. the repatriation of offshore cash.

This is the tonic that will restore capital formation, productivity, real wages, and growth.

Both Senate and House leaders have got to understand how flexible reconciliation is. It can be nearly anything you want it to be. The key player is Senate president Mike Pence, who can overrule the parliamentarian.

.. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

.. “What I have said repeatedly is that any plan we put forward we believe to be paid for with economic growth.”

.. And lowering marginal tax rates across-the-board, especially on large and small businesses, will foster the mother of all prosperities — the one middle-class Americans in all those red counties that voted for Trump have been yearning for.