Tax-package delivery enters the fast lane

Dec. 03--House and Senate Republicans are preparing to launch into an intense round of negotiations aimed at hammering out a final version of the sweeping tax reform bill, a product analysts expect will be delivered to the White House before Christmas.

"They seem to be headed towards a very short conference," GOP strategist John Feehery told the Herald. "This is a Rubik's Cube, it has been a Rubik's Cube, and it seems they've solved in the Senate, but it's fragile."

The early morning passage yesterday of what would be the biggest overhaul of the tax code in a generation thrust lawmakers into a process to reconcile the varying details of the bills passed by the House and Senate. Experts said there aren't many significant policy differences between them, and those that remain probably won't hold up the bill.

Differences in the bills include the size and duration of the personal income tax cuts, the repeal of the Obamacare mandate, the size of cuts for small businesses, and the fate of the alternative minimum tax and estate tax.

"There doesn't seem to be any unbridgeable gaps here," said David Hopkins, a professor at Boston College. "If everybody is motivated to do it, they can work things out really quickly if they put their minds to it."

Leadership in the House and Senate will name members to a conference committee to smooth out the differences between the two measures. The committee will send a final negotiated version back to the House and Senate for one more vote of approval in each body.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said yesterday there aren't any "massive differences" between the House and Senate bills, and he expects to have a final bill sent to President Trump by Christmas. Still, Republicans in Congress have different priorities, and nothing is done in D.C. until it is done.

Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former adviser to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said it's possible negotiations derail in committee.

"Hope springs eternal that this bill could fall apart," Manley said. "The fact of the matter is, once both the House and the Senate have gone on record on voting for something, it might be awfully difficult for some representatives to vote against the final product in the end."

Senate leadership worked hard to win support from the last few holdouts Thursday, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who extracted a commitment to pass two bipartisan measures to stabilize health care markets. Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake's vote came in exchange for a commitment from leadership and the White House to seek "fair and permanent protections for DACA recipients."

Senate Republicans can only afford to lose one more vote after Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker voted against the bill.

"The toughest scenario would be if you wound up with a conference committee that pushed the bill in some direction that made it a lot tougher for people like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski to support," Hopkins said.

Republicans seem generally united in their desire to pass a tax overhaul bill and claim their first major legislative victory.

McConnell disputed the findings from the nonpartisan tax scoring body in Congress that indicates that Republican lawmakers long concerned about the deficit have approved two separate tax bills that would raise the national debt by $1.4 trillion over the next decade.

"I not only don't think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue-neutral," McConnell told reporters after the bill passed the Senate. "In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap."

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