Republican leaders were confident they have the votes to pass their $1.5 trillion tax-cut plan as the House voted Tuesday to officially kick off debate on the bill, teeing up a series of votes they said will deliver the measure to President Trump by the end of the day.
“What we’re doing today is bold,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, Texas Republican and chairman of the rules committee that set the parameters of debate. “The American people want and need a stronger, brighter, economic future.”
The first step came just after noon, when the House approved rules for debating the tax bill on a 233-193 vote.
The bill will then get a full debate in the House, a vote early in the afternoon, and then action in the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said they’ll vote “later this evening.”
It will complete a once-unthinkable timeline to get a tax bill through Congress before Christmas, and comes less than two months after House Republicans released their initial legislative text of the tax bill.
The final package cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. It trims individual rates and lowers the top rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, but makes the individual cuts temporary in order to comply with Senate budget rules that imposed a $1.5 trillion cost limit.
On average, taxpayers across all income levels will see an income tax cut next year, but thanks to the phaseouts would start to see an increase long-term, according to congressional scorekeepers.
Republicans say they anticipate that future Congresses will simply extend the individual cuts.
The plan generally maintains the current progressivity of the tax code, with the top 20 percent of taxpayers paying 65 percent of the taxes next year and the top 5 percent accounting for 50 percent of the taxes.
It winds down various loopholes and exemptions while expanding others, including the child tax credit, which was a change demanded by Sens. Marco Rubio and Mike Lee.
The package also repeals Obamacare’s individual mandate — partially making good on the GOP’s repeated pledges to repeal the law — and opens up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil drilling, which is a long-sought goal of Alaska lawmakers and many other Republicans.
Democrats, meanwhile, have cast the plan as a giveaway to the wealthy, and say Republicans are rushing the process because they don’t want Americans to actually know what’s in the bill
“Disguised as a middle-class tax relief, this wretched bill targets the middle class with a dime of every dollar that is in the bill,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Texas Democrat.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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