House Speaker Paul D. Ryan provided inspiration, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wrangled votes, and President Trump offered grandiloquent cajoling as the Republican Party’s top leaders in Congress pushed their troops to deliver a massive tax code overhaul.
They were at the finish line Tuesday, delivering the first major legislative accomplishment since voters last year gave Republicans complete control of Washington’s political levers.
Although a quick revote was slated in the House for Wednesday morning, Republicans said they had finally scored a legacy-defining bill under Mr. Trump, capping what White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders called a “historic year” for the president and the country.
“The president has delivered on promise after promise, issue after issue, time after time, and we’re just getting started,” she said. “To the forgotten men and women around our country, you are forgotten no more.”
The last time Congress tackled a tax code rewrite, in 1986, Mr. Trump was bolstering his reputation as a New York real estate developer, Mr. McConnell was a freshman senator and Mr. Ryan was a teenager.
“I was working the Quarter Pounder grill at McDonald’s at the intersection of Highway 14 and I-90 in Janesville, Wisconsin. It’s a long time in coming,” Mr. Ryan said.
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As a former budget chairman and then chief tax-law writer, Mr. Ryan took on the role of cheerful warrior throughout the debate, urging his troops to embrace an optimistic vision of what they could accomplish.
“Comprehensive tax reform is his passion, and it’s something he’s cared deeply about,” said Rep. Jason Smith, Missouri Republican. “And he has been involved from his days on the Ways and Means Committee, and he was my chairman on Ways and Means, so this is a big day for him.”
Mr. Ryan gleefully gaveled the 227-203 House vote closed and took time to share a high-five on the floor with Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana and a hug with Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the current Ways and Means Committee chairman.
“Would I have done some things differently? Yeah, sure,” said Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, one of Mr. Scalise’s deputy whips. “But I think for a sausage-making exercise, this is pretty good sausage.”
While passage in the House was never much in doubt, the Senate was a different story.
Close to a dozen Republican senators registered their displeasure at one time or another with various elements of the tax plan, but one by one, Mr. McConnell and his leadership team steadily brought enough of them on board to push things across the finish line.
One breakthrough came when he agreed to calls from some conservatives to include a repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate, ticking off a Republican priority while freeing up money to pump back into tax cuts.
Just weeks after the Senate twice failed to repeal Obamacare, it marked a major turnaround. Senators said Mr. McConnell’s approach to taxes appeared to have incorporated lessons learned from the Obamacare repeal failure.
Sen. John Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, gave Mr. McConnell an “A-plus” for the tax efforts.
“We were at the bottom. We failed twice — not once, but twice — on health care, and he brought us back,” Mr. Kennedy said.
Sen. Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, said Mr. McConnell deserves credit for letting the right people draft the legislation.
“He left a big part of it to the tax writers,” said Mr. Corker, a holdout who ultimately backed the conference report. “While I realize it was a partisan committee process, it went through a committee process, and I think the same thing happened on the House side,” he said.
House Republicans said they were thrilled that Senate Republicans managed to gather the votes for the tax bill, though it didn’t absolve failures they laid at the Senate’s feet.
“They’re two separate issues,” said Rep. Mark Meadows, North Carolina Republican. “It doesn’t matter what [I] say, the American people will give us an ’F’ on what we did with health care, and they’ll give us an ’A’ on tax reform. At the end of the day, we’ve got to do more than ’A’ and ’F.’”
Throughout the process Mr. Trump played both cheerleader and enforcer, at one point bringing families to the White House to talk about the tax breaks they would get under the bill. At other times, he took to Twitter to press Republicans to get on board.
The president and senior advisers monitored the House vote on flat-screen TVs in offices throughout the West Wing. Some aides let out a cheer when the measure passed shortly after 2 p.m.
Despite the legislative breakthrough, Mr. Trump’s job approval ratings remain below 40 percent in most surveys.
Mrs. Sanders blamed negative coverage by liberal media outlets.
“Oftentimes, the media is focused on other things — certainly not talking about the growing economy, certainly not talking about the crushing of ISIS, not talking about the creation of jobs,” she said. “Ninety percent of the coverage is negative about this president.”
She predicted that Mr. Trump’s popularity in polls will rise “as more and more people start to feel the impact of the booming economy.”
Democratic Party leaders also claimed victory in the vote. Although they didn’t affect the policy, they did keep all of their members together in opposition, ensuring the legislation won’t have even the veneer of bipartisanship.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, predicted the bill will doom Republicans in midterm elections next year.
“This bill will be an anchor around the ankles of every Republican,” Mr. Schumer said.
House Democrats are likewise bullish on their chances to retake the House — at one time an unthinkable prospect that has become increasingly possible as Republicans stumbled on Capitol Hill and suffered defeats at the ballot box.
But Rep. Chris Collins, New York Republican, called the vote “a good win for our party.”
“It was a must win. It’s going to give us a lot of wind at our backs — and in our sails — going into our midterms,” Mr. Collins said.
Some lawmakers speculated that Mr. Ryan might see this as the perfect moment to step away from politics, saying he can claim victory and turn over the speakership.
But he fervently denied that prospect Tuesday, calling a report in Politico last week “faulty speculation.”
“I’m not going anywhere anytime soon, and let’s leave that at that,” Mr. Ryan said.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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