House Republicans have to find 5.5 trillion dollars in spending cuts. By tomorrow.
You might well figure congressional Republicans dream and scheme about tax cut legislation all the time, night and day, weekends and holidays. It’s certainly that kind of obsessive preoccupation for them on the campaign trail.
Yet here we are, after having all year to prepare for 2017’s big barbecue of tax cuts, and on the very eve of the House GOP’s unveiling of its version of “tax reform,” the process has apparently devolved into sweaty madness, with a strong possibility the whole show will have to be delayed, according to Politico:
As Josh Barro quips on Twitter: “Oh, that little detail!”
In their budget resolution Republicans gave themselves a ten-year total of 1.5 trillion in deficits they could burn up in tax cuts. But that was not remotely enough. And because they decided not to take the political heat associated with the big spending cuts they always proposed back when vetoes from President Obama made it all theoretical, the GOP now has to come up with revenue offsets to pay for at least that portion of the tax cuts that they can’t deem self-financed by the alleged economic growth they are unleashing.
Trial balloons have been lofted over the Capitol repeatedly carrying possible revenue-raisers. Many have been shot down, beginning with a huge new “border adjustment tax” that importers and retailers stopped early on.
Yet the scrambling continues. In the last week House tax-writers appeared to cave on new limits for contributions to 401(k) retirement plans, and on a slower phase-in of corporate tax cuts. The White House noisily objected to both those ideas. And the near-defeat of the budget resolution at the hands of House Republicans from high-tax states who objected to plans to kill the tax deduction for state and local taxes made that provision suddenly risky. So it’s all a moving target, which makes the average Republican Member of Congress who is expected to be preparing lusty cheers for the unveiling tomorrow a mite nervous.
Yeah, they might need another day.
