The speaker’s remarks will come days after the Senate’s effort to repeal and immediately replace ObamaCare fell apart.
Speaker Paul Ryan Paul Ryan to sell tax reform at Mass. factory Thursday Dem rep: Stripping war authorization repeal ‘underhanded & undemocratic’ GOP frets over stalled agenda MORE (R-Wis.) will make the case for tax reform on Thursday at a New Balance shoe manufacturing facility in Massachusetts, as he works to rally businesses behind Republican plans to rewrite the tax code.
The Speaker’s remarks will come days after the Senate’s effort to repeal ObamaCare fell apart. Without a win on healthcare, the stakes will be high for Republicans to pass tax legislation ahead of the midterm elections.
In an interview with “The Mike Gallagher Show” on Wednesday, Ryan said he was hopeful that the White House and congressional Republicans would get the job done.
“The good thing about tax reform, unlike, say healthcare, is Republicans are sort of wired the same way, ” he said. “Our DNA is very, very similar, and we all know that we must do this, because it’s been since ’86 … and the rest of the world has passed us up and we have the worst tax system in the world, and we got to fix that.”
Ryan continued to defend the border-adjustment tax proposal that was part of the blueprint he released last year, saying that he wants to remove the incentive for companies to make products overseas. But he acknowledged that the proposal, which would tax imports and exempt exports, is controversial, and he said it’s most important for lawmakers and the White House to reach a consensus.
“At the end of the day, what matters is we get tax reform that we can all agree to, and so we’re working toward that consensus, ” he said. “And I do fundamentally and sincerely and optimistically believe, we are there, we’re going to get there.”
For the past several months, Ryan has been talking to manufacturers across the country in order to excite them about tax reform. He visited Ohio businesses in May, gave a speech at the National Association of Manufacturers’ D. C. event in June and held town halls with employees at Wisconsin businesses earlier this month.
