The White House and Republicans expect to begin the serious work of tax reform when Congress returns from a two-week break at the end of April.
Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee plan hearings on the tax reform plan that committee Chairman Kevin Brady and House Speaker Paul Ryan have been advocating since June. Members of the committee are still discussing the timing and topics of the hearings, a committee aide said Monday.
Meanwhile, the Trump White House tax team, mostly members of the National Economic Council, according to a White House spokesman, is planning meetings with congressional leaders on tax legislation when they return from their states and districts in the last week of April.
Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council, said in a Friday interview with Bloomberg TV that the administration was “going to launch with one cohesive plan together” with Republicans in the House and Senate.
To do that, and to have legislation to President Trump’s desk before the end of the year as intended, the White House would have to sort through and decide on an enormous number of policy differences that divide Republicans, starting with the House Republican proposal to adjust taxes at the border. Trump has yet to say where he stands on that idea, which is fiercely opposed by retailers and refineries that would see their imports taxed.
“It’d be nice to know exactly where we’re going and to have them tell us,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, before leaving for the April break.
“There’s a lot of very bright guys there, and they’re kicking around various approaches to this,” Hatch said, but it’s “pretty hard to move without the president.”
The administration would have to move quickly even though high-level administration positions overseeing taxes remain unfilled, starting with the assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy, a lack of manpower that some critics have said will hamper efforts to overhaul the tax code.
Yet Trump, Cohn, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and other top administration officials don’t need much more help answering the big questions about reform, such as whether it should include the border adjustment and whether it is acceptable if it adds to the deficit.
But for nitty-gritty details, many of which could determine whether specific industries or interests sign on to eventual legislation, “you really do need a fully staffed and functioning executive branch team,” said Carnegie Mellon University tax expert Jeff Kupfer, who served in the George W. Bush Treasury Department and as executive director of Bush’s panel on tax reform.
To that point, the White House has had only a couple of “howdy, howdy’ visits” with lawmakers in the House, said Rep. Kenny Marchant of Texas, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, and it hasn’t established a definite point of contact.
But Marchant, like Hatch, views the principals as more than capable of getting the effort underway.
“They’ve got the top people in, and fortunately the top people are very smart on this subject matter,” he said.
