President Donald Trump kicked off his party’s major push for tax reform with a speech in Springfield, Missouri, Wednesday, pledging to reduce the burden of taxation on America’s companies and workers and calling for Democratic support.
“The foundation of our job creation agenda is to fundamentally reform our tax code for the first time in more than 30 years,” Trump said.
Although Congress has pressing spending issues to tackle when it returns to Washington next week, tax reform promises to be the flavor of the month. Congressional and White House leaders have been in talks to hash out a mutually agreeable plan for months, but it will now fall to the tax-writing committees to turn an assortment of broad tax goals into a feasible piece of legislation. The process will likely mean compromising on a number of the White House’s recommended cuts, including a corporate tax reduction from 35 percent to 15 percent that the president touted on Wednesday. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady has expressed hope that the final plan might get the corporate tax rate down to 20 percent; Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch isn’t even that ambitious.
“In fact, it would be kind of miraculous if we could get it down to 25 percent or less,” the Utah Republican said in late-July.
The GOP controls only 52 Senate seats, and leaders are acutely aware of how difficult it is to pass legislation on a party-line vote after their failure to achieve Obamacare repeal in July. So for tax reform, the White House plans to raise the pressure on blue-state senators up for reelection in 2018.
“What could possibly be more bipartisan than allowing Americans to keep more of what they earn and creating an environment for real job and wage growth in the country that we love so much?” Trump asked.
The White House’s decision to hold the rally in Missouri underscored this strategy: Its Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, is considered one of her party’s most vulnerable incumbents. The fact did not go unnoticed to Trump.
“She must do this for you, and if she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” declared Trump, who carried the Show Me State by 19 percentage points last November. “We just can’t do this anymore with the obstruction and the obstructionists.”
Politico reports that the White House will also attempt to target Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. All three states went to Trump in the presidential election by at least 20 points. Manchin, Donnelly, and Heitkamp were the only Senate Democrats who declined to sign onto Democratic leader Chuck Schumer’s counter-proposal on tax reform earlier in August.
Amid all the political and policy maneuvering, however, Congress still needs to move a budget for next year to use “reconciliation” in tax reform. As with the health reform process, reconciliation would allow Republicans to approve a Senate measure with just 50 votes, instead of needing 60 to clear procedural hurdles. As Brady said before members broke for the August recess, “Clearly, no budget, no tax reform.” The House Budget Committee approved its budget resolution in July, but just advancing it out of the House—much less negotiating with the Senate on its budget preferences—remains a necessary first step.
Even as Republicans work to pick up support across the aisle to avoid repeating the health reform debacle, Trump made it clear he expects Congress not to fail again.
“This is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real tax reform for everyday, hard-working Americans. And I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done,” Trump said. “And I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?”
