Senate Republicans are trying to manage expectations for major tax provisions passing into law before the end of the year.
Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced a nearly 300-page bill that would extend a variety of tax breaks, reform retirement incentives, and provide technical corrections to the GOP-passed tax overhaul law. But GOP hopes to pass the entire package into law, which would require bipartisan support in the Senate, are fading as the upper chamber tries to work through an end-of-year laundry list of items.
Now Senate Republicans hope provisions aimed at extending existing temporary tax breaks on items ranging from clean energy to horse racing, along with some of the retirement and technical corrections, will ride on another must-pass bill, likely a government funding measure.
“We realize it’s going to be hard to get the technical corrections and all the things we want to get done done, but the Democrats in the Senate are probably going to oppose them all,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., a member of the Finance Committee and Senate GOP leadership. “So we’re just trying to figure out what can get 60 [votes] in the Senate, how much of the tax policy can we get done on some kind of year-end vehicle.”
But talks to do that, to the extent they’re happening, remain at an impasse as President Trump’s border wall funding remains the number-one item to be hashed out in the legislation Congress must pass by Dec. 21 to avoid a partial government shutdown. Thune’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Dick Durbin D-Ill., said he adamantly opposed any tax provisions as part of the funding legislation.
“As of this date, none,” Durbin said succinctly and emphatically when asked what provisions could be included alongside funding.
For his part, Thune said the Finance Committee, which holds jurisdiction over tax policy in the Senate, would be incorporated into negotiations. But a Democratic aide for the committee told the Washington Examiner that no talks were happening yet at the committee level.
Senate Democrats claim they were caught off-guard by the end-of-year proposal in the House, and could wait until the eleventh hour to make their own ask, either on taxes or in another area of legislation.
Thune noted the limited time remaining between now and Dec. 21 for the Senate to wrap up its already busy potential to-do list of criminal justice reform, the farm bill, consideration of Trump administration nominees, and a resolution to restrict U.S. military involvement in Yemen.
“The agenda’s obviously very full,” said the South Dakota Republican.
