President Trump on Monday eased off his demand that Congress pass tax legislation before the end of the year, and suggested Monday that it would be acceptable to pass such a major bill in his second year in office.
“I would like very much to see it be done this year. We won’t go a step further — if we get it done that’s a great achievement,” Trump said during a press briefing at the White House.
“But don’t forget, it took years for the Reagan administration to get taxes done. I’ve been here for nine months, a little more than nine months,” he hedged.
The president compared the tax reform effort with former President Barack Obama’s push to pass Obamacare, and noted that the Democrat-led Congress didn’t pass that bill until well into Obama’s second year in office.
Appearing with Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also drew attention that both Obamacare and Obama’s Wall Street reform bill didn’t pass until 2010. “We’re going to get this job done, and the goal is to get it done by the end of the year,” McConnell said.
Speaking earlier at a meeting of bankers in Chicago, Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn suggested that Republicans needed to pass a tax bill in 2017, on the grounds that the politics and logistics of implementing tax changes enacted in 2018 would be “less appealing.”
“The opportunity is now,” Cohn told the American Bankers Association.
Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan threatened to keep lawmakers in Washington to vote throughout Christmas if necessary to pass tax reform by the end of the year.
While Reagan’s full tax reform did not pass until 1986, Reagan did pass a major tax cut in August of 1981, during his first year in office.
