Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday hit back at claims repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate was being used as a bargaining chip in tax reform negotiations between congressional Republicans.
“The president thinks we should get rid of it, I think we should get rid of it,” Mnuchin told “Fox News Sunday.” “I think right now our objective is to keep [the Senate’s repeal of the mandate] in. It provides a big tax cut for the middle class, it gets rid of the penalty, but we are going to work with the Senate as we go through this.”
The House passed its iteration of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on Nov. 16. The Senate Finance Committee passed its version of the bill last week and it’s being considered by the full chamber.
Mnuchin said he didn’t believe the GOP tax plan favored wealthy and corporate America.
But, he said he couldn’t be certain Congress would re-up the proposed individual tax cuts in 2025, only that he had “a lot of confidence” those in power then would do “the right thing.”
“Because we’re changing from an international system to a territorial system, we need to make the corporate tax cuts permanent,” he said. “Because of that we were forced to phase out the personal tax side.”
“This is about making the business tax system competitive, it’s about creating jobs and this is about a very significant middle income tax cut,” he added.
