Well, the white smoke has ascended and the Senate has enacted a tax reform bill. That a final form will emerge from reconciliation, be enacted into law, and signed by the president is virtually assured. The Washington Post reports:
Senate Republicans passed a $1.5 trillion tax bill early Saturday morning that bestows massive benefits on corporate America and the wealthy while delivering mixed blessings to everybody else.
After a frantic round of negotiations, Republicans came together in near unanimity behind the landmark legislation. The final vote was 51 to 49, with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) the lone GOP holdout. No Democrats voted for the bill.
The measure still has to be reconciled with an earlier House-passed version before being sent to President Trump. Yet in getting the bill through the Senate, Republicans succeeded where they failed earlier this year, when their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act collapsed in mortifying fashion.
This time, urged on by donors and fearful of facing voters in next year’s midterm elections without a legislative achievement to show, Republicans said time and again that failure was not an option.
“The American people wanted change,†said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.). “We were able to deliver.â€
As I’ve noted before, tax law is like a ship. Over time it tends to acquire barnacles and needs to be hauled up into drydock and scraped clean. It’s been almost 35 years since we’ve had major tax reform so we’re due.
Sadly, my complaints about the Affordable Care Act apply to the tax reform bill as well. While it might have been necessary, it isn’t sufficient and the realities of both tax reform and health reform are similar: they’re politically painful to enact, for that reason Congress tends to avoid returning to the subject, and they rarely become better incrementally.
In this case I suspect that both the supporters of tax cuts and their opponents are exaggerating the benefit and harm, respectively. I doubt that we’ll get the growth we seriously need from this tax reform bill alone but it won’t be the end of the world, either.
Do we really know everything that is in it? The ACA spent over a year being passed, and had many public hearings, and people still complained it was hard to tell what was in it. Tax reform was passed without public hearings and mostly done in private, pushed through in a few months.
Steve
Yeah, I don’t have much confidence that this will be a good or sufficient tax reform package.