Republican leaders have forced Sen. Marco Rubio into a tough position on the tax bill.
Congressional Republican leaders and President Trump have signed off on a corporate tax rate of more than 20 percent for the final tax bill after the Senate denied the Florida senator’s attempt to settle for a rate of 20.94 percent in exchange for extending the bill’s doubled child tax credit to working-class families.
Rubio and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah wanted to exchange the slightly higher corporate tax rate for making the credit refundable against payroll taxes. That change would have meant tax breaks for millions of low- and middle-income families with no or little income tax liability.
Instead, the deal struck in conference would raise the corporate tax rate and apply the savings to lower top individual tax rates. Because both bills set the brackets for the top individual rates at very high levels, the changes in conference would effectively be bigger breaks for millionaires.
“If you make $40,000, we can’t find the money to increase the child tax credit, but if you make a million a year we can?” Rubio said Wednesday afternoon, reacting to reports about the emerging bill. He didn’t add more.
Rubio had warned of “problems” if the bill was changed in conference to set a corporate tax rate higher than 20 percent without expanding the child tax credit.
Republicans can lose only two votes and still pass the tax bill, assuming no Democrats vote for it. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker voted against the bill during Senate passage, and said Wednesday that no changes had been made in conference to try to address his objections about the bill’s impact on the debt.
That leaves Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with a one-vote margin, so any two Republicans could band together and demand changes to the bill.
