Chris Van Hollen: Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on tax reform

Sen. Chris Van Hollen said Wednesday that Senate Democrats are willing to work with Republicans on tax reform, such as simplifying the tax code.

“We just actually sent a letter to Mitch McConnell — we, meaning the Democrats in the Senate — saying we’re happy to work with them on genuine tax reform. We’re not interested in providing another round of windfall tax breaks to very, very wealthy people. We don’t think that’s the priority in the country. But we asked them to follow Sen. McCain’s advice. Let’s work through the regular order, [and] let’s have hearings when it comes to tax reform,” Mr. Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat, said on MSNBC.

He said Democrats would like to work on simplifying the tax code and removing pieces put in there by special interests and lobbyists. Mr. Van Hollen also said, however, that Democrats will oppose anything that offers big tax breaks to wealthy people.

“What we saw in the early 2000s was trickle-down economics didn’t work. We had the Bush tax cuts, [and] they spiked the deficit way up. They didn’t do anything for regular working people. There are things we can do to simplify the tax code. There’s a lot of junk in there that was put in there by people who were able to hire special-interest lobbyists. We need to clean a lot of that stuff out,” Mr. Van Hollen said.

In the letter that Senate Democrats send to Republican leaders and President Trump on Tuesday, Democrats urged them not to use rules to protect the bill from a filibuster. They also made it clear they would not support anything that added to the deficit.