A public hearing of the conference committee on Wednesday will be largely a show given that Republican lawmakers are close to a final deal on the $1.5 trillion tax bill.
• President Trump dines with Republican lawmakers at the White House before giving a speech at 3 p.m. on the $1.5 trillion tax plan moving through Congress
• The Senate and House conference committee holds a public hearing on the tax bill at 2 p.m.
• A final deal could be announced today, ahead of a vote next week
House and Senate Republicans are moving closer to a final deal on their $1.5 trillion tax overhaul, with both chambers working feverishly to resolve key differences between the two bills. The looming loss of the Republican seat in the Senate from Alabama adds to the pressure that party members in Congress face to ensure that their tax overhaul faces no last-minute hiccups that push the bill into next year. On Wednesday, they will look to keep the momentum going in the face of Democrats who are feeling newly emboldened.
At 2 p.m. the conference committee that was created to merge the House and Senate tax bills will hold its one public meeting. The committee members are a mix of Republicans and Democrats from the House and Senate.
The gathering will be one of the final times that Democrats will be able to publicly criticize the tax legislation while being face-to-face with the Republicans who are crafting it. Thus far, they have largely assailed the partisan process and argued that the bill benefits the rich and corporations and doesn’t do enough to help the middle class.
For Republicans, the public meeting is largely for show, as the final negotiations are happening behind closed doors and the major details have already been agreed upon. Republicans are planning to pass the bill along party lines and have so far rebuffed Democrats’ requests to change the bill.
The odds remain strong that congressional Republicans will send a consensus tax bill to Mr. Trump, despite Democrats’ upset Senate victory in Alabama on Tuesday.
The news that Doug Jones, a Democrat, had defeated Roy Moore, a Republican, in the election immediately sent many liberal activists dreaming of another improbable win: blocking a tax bill that has already passed the House and Senate, but still needs to be reconciled in a conference committee.
Math and momentum fueled that activist optimism. Once Mr. Jones is seated in the Senate, Republicans’ majority in the chamber will narrow to a single seat. The tax bill passed the Senate on a 51-49 vote, with one Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee, defecting. The hope among liberals, espoused on social media Tuesday night, was that Mr. Jones’ victory would give other Republicans pause and delay the process of reconciling the bills.
If another Republican senator were then to defect — for example, Susan Collins of Maine, who extracted concessions from party leadership in order to vote yes on the bill initially, but has watched some of those concessions go as yet unfulfilled — then the bill could stall.
Those scenarios still appear highly unlikely. Republican leaders in the House and Senate are close to agreement on a consensus bill, which could be announced as soon as Wednesday. They are prepared to hold votes early next week on the measure, well before the Alabama results are expected to be certified, making Mr. Jones eligible to be seated. Party leaders remain confident Mr. Trump will sign the bill before Christmas — most likely before Mr. Jones enters the Senate.
The one wrinkle from Tuesday night, for Republicans and the bill, is that the results empower individual senators to demand even more from the leadership for their votes. Ms. Collins and Marco Rubio of Florida have both raised concerns this week about the compromise bill as it is shaping up. Party leaders may be forced to address their concerns or apply more pressure to keep them, and possibly others, in line.
But even if Republicans were to defect en masse in the Senate, the tax bill could still sail to Mr. Trump — if House Republicans were to approve the version that passed the Senate. That version included some apparent drafting errors that have upset business interests, most notably the rate of the corporate alternative minimum tax. But in a worst-case scenario, party leaders could decide that bill is better than no bill at all, and promise to return to fix the provisions later — an echo of how Democrats proceeded to pass the Affordable Care Act after they lost a similarly stunning Senate special election, in Massachusetts, in 2010.
Democrats are mounting a concerted, though likely fruitless, effort to get Republican leadership in the Senate to delay the tax bill vote until Mr. Jones is seated as a senator from Alabama.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, to “hit pause on his tax bill” after the Democratic candidate won the special election for Senate in Alabama on Tuesday.
“It would be wrong for Senate Republicans to jam through this tax bill without giving the newly elected senator from Alabama the opportunity to cast his vote,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference at the Capitol on Wednesday morning.
Mr. Schumer drew a parallel with the election of Scott Brown, a Republican, in a special election in Massachusetts in 2010 as Democrats were trying to enact their health care overhaul.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon similarly said the bill should be delayed until Mr. Jones arrives, saying in a tweet “The people of Alabama have spoken.”
Behind closed doors, Republicans are continuing to work through the final numbers on the corporate tax rate, the top individual tax rate and how high to cap to mortgage interest deduction.
As of Tuesday evening, Republicans were coalescing around a corporate rate of 21 percent, a top individual rate of 37 percent and a mortgage interest deduction cap of $750,000.
Top Congressional aides have cautioned, however, that these numbers remain in flux as some Republican lawmakers have publicly expressed disappointment in the proposed changes.
Mr. Trump is hosting a lunch for members of the Congressional conference committee working on tax legislation. That committee is made up of members from both parties, but only Republicans will be attending the lunch.
The White House on Wednesday released a name of those dining with Mr. Trump, including Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, eight Republican senators and Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee.
