Steven Mnuchin said at an event Friday that he will push Congress to enact comprehensive tax reform by its August recess, though he acknowledged that the timetable might slip.
.. Reworking the health-care law as the House envisioned would have also cut roughly $1 trillion in revenue. That would have made it simpler for Republicans to pass a future overhaul of the tax code because they wouldn’t have needed to find additional revenue to offset new tax cuts.
.. Grover Norquist said the bloc of hard line Republicans who helped stymie the health-care overhaul were guilty of “ripping the lungs out of tax reform.”
.. “they didn’t shoot and wound health-care reform, they shot and killed permanent tax reform.”
.. widen the deficit by anywhere from $2.6 trillion to $7 trillion over 10 years
.. Many Republicans have long vowed that an overhaul of the tax code must be “revenue neutral,” which means they need to find new revenue to offset the reduction in rates.
.. Ryan has proposed a border-adjustment tax that would essentially create new taxes on items imported into the United States as a way to raise close to $1 trillion in new revenue
.. the Republican agenda is also undercut by “a president who’s out of his league and doesn’t know how to legislate.”
.. Newt Gingrich, who was a close adviser to Trump during the campaign, said the White House should postpone what is expected to be a messy battle over the tax code and instead pivot toward trying to build a large infrastructure package.
.. A principal reason changing the tax code is so difficult is because interest groups flood Washington looking for tax cuts but fight vigorously against any measure that would increase their bills.
.. there are very different views within the Republican Party.
.. holdouts can kill it. That empowers the holdouts.”
.. Congress must also reach an agreement to raise or suspend the debt ceiling by August or September