(Aurday after a burst of eleventh-hour horse trading, as a
party starved all year for a major legislative triumph took a giant
step toward giving President Donald Trump one of his top priorities by
Christmas.
"Big
bills are rarely popular. You remember how unpopular 'Obamacare' was
when it passed?" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in
an interview, shrugging off polls showing scant public enthusiasm for
the measure. He said the legislation would prove to be "just what the
country needs to get growing again."
Trump
hailed the bill's passage on Twitter, thanking McConnell and Senate
Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "Look forward to signing
a final bill before Christmas!" the president wrote.
Presiding
over the Senate, Vice President Mike Pence announced the 51-49 vote to
applause from Republicans. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., was the only
lawmaker to cross party lines, joining the Democrats in opposition. The
measure focuses its tax reductions on businesses and higher-earning
individuals, gives more modest breaks to others and offers the boldest
rewrite of the nation's tax system since 1986.
Republicans
touted the package as one that would benefit people of all incomes and
ignite the economy. Even an official projection of a $1 trillion,
10-year flood of deeper budget deficits couldn't dissuade GOP senators
from rallying behind the bill.
"Obviously
I'm kind of a dinosaur on the fiscal issues," said Corker, who battled
to keep the bill from worsening the government's accumulated $20
trillion in IOUs.
The
Republican-led House approved a similar bill last month in what has
been a stunningly swift trip through Congress for complex legislation
that impacts the breadth of American society. The two chambers will now
try crafting a final compromise to send Trump.
After
spending the year's first nine months futilely trying to repeal
President Barack Obama's health care law, GOP leaders were determined to
move the measure rapidly before opposition Democrats and lobbying
groups could blow it up. The party views passage as crucial to retaining
its House and Senate majorities in next year's elections.
Democrats
derided the bill as a GOP gift to its wealthy and business backers at
the expense of lower-earning people. They contrasted the bill's
permanent reduction in corporate income tax rates from 35 percent to 20
percent to smaller individual tax breaks that would end in 2026.
Congress'
nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said the bill's reductions
for many families would be modest and said by 2027, families earning
under $75,000 would on average face higher, not lower, taxes.
The
bill is "removed from the reality of what the American people need,"
said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. He criticized
Republicans for releasing a revised, 479-page bill that no one can
absorb shortly before the final vote, saying, "The Senate is descending
to a new low of chicanery."
"You
really don't read this kind of legislation," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis.,
told home-state reporters, asked why the Senate was approving a bill
some senators hadn't read. He said lawmakers needed to study it and get
feedback from affected groups.
Democrats
took to the Senate floor and social media to mock one page that
included changes scrawled in barely legible handwriting. Later, they won
enough GOP support to kill a provision by Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., that
would have bestowed a tax break on conservative Hillsdale College in
Michigan.
The
bill hit rough waters after the Joint Taxation panel concluded it would
worsen federal shortfalls by $1 trillion over a decade, even when
factoring in economic growth that lower taxes would stimulate. Trump
administration officials and many Republicans have insisted the bill
would pay for itself by stimulating the economy. But the sour
projections stiffened resistance from some deficit-averse Republicans.
But
after bargaining that stretched into Friday, GOP leaders nailed down
the support they needed in a chamber they control 52-48. Facing
unyielding Democratic opposition, Republicans could lose no more than
two GOP senators and prevail with a tie-breaking vote from Vice
President Mike Pence, but ended up not needing it.
Leaders'
changes included helping millions of companies whose owners pay
individual, not corporate, taxes on their profits by allowing deductions
of 23 percent, up from 17.4 percent. That helped win over Wisconsin's
Johnson and Steve Daines of Montana.
People
would be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, a demand of
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. That matched a House provision that
chamber's leaders included to keep some GOP votes from high-tax states
like New York, New Jersey and California.
The
changes added nearly $300 billion to the tax bill's costs. To pay for
that, leaders reduced the number of high-earners who must pay the
alternative minimum tax, rather than completely erasing it. They also
increased a one-time tax on profits U.S.-based corporations are holding
overseas and would require firms to keep paying the business version of
the alternative minimum tax.
Sen.
Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. — who like Corker had been a holdout and has
sharply attacked Trump's capabilities as president — voted for the bill.
He said he'd received commitments from party leaders and the
administration "to work with me" to restore protections, dismantled by
Trump, for young immigrants who arrived in the U.S. illegally as
children. That seemed short of a pledge to actually revive the
safeguards.
The
Senate bill would drop the highest personal income tax rate from 39.6
percent to 38.5 percent. The estate tax levied on a few thousand of the
nation's largest inheritances would be narrowed to affect even fewer.
Deductions
for state and local income taxes, moving expenses and other items would
vanish, the standard deduction — used by most Americans — would nearly
double to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples, and the
per-child tax credit would grow.
The
bill would abolish the "Obamacare" requirement that most people buy
health coverage or face tax penalties. Industry experts say that would
weaken the law by easing pressure on healthier people to buy coverage,
and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has said the move would
push premiums higher and leave 13 million additional people uninsured.
Drilling
would be allowed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Another
provision, knocked out because it violated Senate budget rules, would
have explicitly let parents buy tax-advantaged 529 college savings
accounts for fetuses, a step they can already take but which
anti-abortion forces wanted to inscribe into law. There were also breaks
for the wine, beer and spirits industries, Alaska Natives and aircraft
management firms.
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