The public seems to be against the plan precisely because they know what’s in it.
President Donald Trump says he doesn’t want to cut taxes on the rich. His Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he doesn’t want to cut taxes on the rich. The Democratic Party says they don’t want to cut taxes on the rich. Americans saythey don’t want to cut taxes on the rich.
The House and Senate Republican tax bills are taking a different approach: They are cutting taxes on the rich—significantly.
.. Nearly 50 percent of the benefits of the Senate tax cut would go to the top 5 percent of household earners in the first year of the law, according to the Tax Policy Center. By 2027, 98 percent of multimillionaires would still get a tax cut, compared to just 27 percent of households making less than $75,000.
.. Republican politicians, whose campaigns are often financed by wealthy conservative donors like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch family, are worried that a failure to cut taxes on corporations will have a detrimental effect on contributions from the party’s corporate-libertarian wing. “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,'” Representative Chris Collins
.. The “financial contributions will stop” if the GOP fails to deliver corporate tax cuts, Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, told NBC News. “The donor class … has concluded that the inaction of this administration and Congress is totally unacceptable,” Josh Holmes, the former chief of staff to Senator Mitch McConnell, told CNN.
.. David Frum wrote this week, “the broad outline of tax reform seems obvious: Lower corporate rates to somewhere between 25 and 30 percent, the developed-world norm [and] tighten collection so that the rate is actually paid.”
.. that very idea has already been proposed by President Barack Obama in 2012.
Republicans immediately rejected it, just as they rebuffed the president’s inclusion of ideas hatched at the conservative Heritage Foundation in the Affordable Care Act.
GOP leaders in advanced talks to change tax plan in bid to win over holdouts
The lawmakers attracting the most concern from leadership and the White House are Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who say the current version of the bill favors corporations over other businesses.
.. Currently, in the Senate bill, these companies are allowed to deduct 17.4 percent of their income from their tax liability. Negotiators are looking at expanding that credit up to about 20 percent
.. their tax plan does not allow individuals, families, and pass-through companies to deduct their state and local taxes from their taxable income. The tax plan does allow firms that pay corporate income taxes to deduct their state and local taxes.
.. To create more parity, negotiators are considering putting new curbs on the ability of corporations to deduct state and local taxes from their income.
.. a change requested by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), which would allow Americans to deduct $10,000 in local property taxes from their taxable income.
.. Making this change could cost more than $100 billion over 10 years
.. But Johnson is on the budget panel, and he could demand changes by Tuesday in order to win his vote. If he blocks the tax bill in the Budget Committee and is joined by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has raised separate concerns, the package could quickly die.
Congress confronts jam-packed December with shutdown deadline looming
Under current law, Congress may appropriate no more than $549 billion for defense programs and $516 billion for nondefense programs next year, a cut from current levels.
.. But the Trump administration and defense hawks want to boost defense spending to more than $600 billion, and Democrats are demanding a dollar-for-dollar increase in nondefense spending.
.. Aides from both parties warned that if a spending accord is not reached this week, hopes for the passage of a broad appropriations bill before Christmas would be dim.
.. The GOP tax bill, which is being considered under special procedures that do not require bipartisan cooperation, has made some Democrats increasingly resistant to collaborating with Republicans in any sense.
.. lawmakers also are pushing to deliver tens of billions of dollars in additional federal aid to disaster victims across the country before the year ends
.. Complicating the passage of any spending deal are the highly charged politics of health care and immigration.
.. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program .. giving Congress until March to codify protections for the young immigrants
.. A Jones victory could spell doom for the GOP tax bill if it is not passed into law by the time he would be seated, probably in late December or early January.
.. “If Roy Moore wins and he comes into the Senate in January, there’s going to immediately be an ethics investigation, which is going to be a cloud . . . and is going to be a distraction for us and our agenda,” Thune said
.. The Children’s Health Insurance Program expired Sept. 30
.. While states have been able to continue their programs using surplus funds, at least five states say they will inform families that their coverage is in jeopardy and begin winding down their programs if Congress does not act in coming weeks.
.. A federal law that allows intelligence agencies to gather foreign electronic communications on U.S. soil will expire Dec. 31,
Corporate Tax Reform Is the Key to Growth
It could increase the U.S. capital stock by $5 trillion and cause a $500 billion rise in annual income.
The debate over tax reform is focusing on all the wrong things: the personal rates and the deduction for state and local taxes. What will truly matter for the economy is corporate tax reform, which will lead to a major increase in capital spending by companies. That in turn will raise productivity and real wages.
These gains start small but will grow year after year as capital flows to corporate investment in the U.S. from the rest of the world and from other parts of the U.S. economy... Since GDP is projected to be $30 trillion in 2027, a $500 billion increase represents a gain of 1.7%, or just 0.17% per year over the decade... Cutting the corporate rate to 20% would raise retained earnings by about $2 trillion over 10 years... The lower tax rate will also induce foreign companies to shift some of their production to America. And capital within the U.S. will move from low-productivity uses in agriculture and housing to corporate investments.. It is troubling that America’s ratio of debt to GDP has more than doubled in the past 10 years and is projected to increase from 77% today to 91% in a decade.. An extra $1.5 trillion of debt will raise that ratio to 96%. But I believe the advantages of the corporate tax reform outweigh the adverse effects of the relatively small debt increase... The debt-to-GDP ratio, which was 35% as recently as 2007