The Latest: Moderate Dems ask GOP to negotiate on taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Republican tax overhaul legislation (all times local):

12:55 p.m.

A group of moderate Senate Democrats are asking Republicans to work with them to refashion their tax bill into legislation they say would truly help the middle class.

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who led the group, tells Republicans: "We can get you to 70" votes on a bill.

Democrats weren't included in the crafting of the tax overhaul legislation, and they have attacked it as benefiting big corporations and the wealthy.

Several of the moderates had been actively courted by President Donald Trump on the tax overhaul in recent weeks, invited to meetings and dinners at the White House and trips with Trump on his plane.

Manchin, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota are from states easily carried by Trump in the 2016 election. They are up for re-election next year.

10:30 a.m.

The House's chief tax-writer says ending the "Obamacare" requirement that everyone have health insurance — an element of the Senate bill — is a move the House also is likely to accept.

Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, made his comments Tuesday as Senate Republican leaders pushed to pass their bill this week. It would eventually have to be reconciled with the tax measure recently passed by the House.

Brady has previously said that repealing the so-called individual mandate under the Obama health care law was politically risky. But he told the American Enterprise Institute that "the House has always been strongly supportive of eliminating that forced tax."

He said, "We're going to let the Senate process go forward, encourage the Senate to deliver a good pro-growth product."

3:26 a.m.

Republicans are struggling to win over resistant GOP senators to a sweeping tax bill that President Donald Trump and their party have set as a vital political goal.

Trump, who has assured lawmakers there will be changes, is traveling to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to personally lobby Republican senators. Senate GOP leaders hope to pass the bill this week.

Anxious to pass a tax overhaul package by year's end with an eye to the 2018 elections, Trump and the GOP leaders scrambled Monday to make changes to the Senate version to woo the Republican holdouts. Republicans have only two votes to spare in the Senate, where they hold a 52-48 edge, and anticipate Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie, if needed.