The Finance 202: Now, the hard part: Writing a tax bill

By Tory Newmyer October 20 at 8:10 AM

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Senate passes Republican-proposed budget blueprint

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the budget blueprint passed in the Senate on Oct. 19, by a vote of 51 to 49. (U.S. Senate)

Senate Republicans just paved their yellow brick road to a $1.5 trillion tax cut. 
After an anticlimactic vote-a-rama on Thursday evening, the upper chamber voted along party lines — minus Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) — to approve a spending blueprint that will allow Republicans to pass a massive tax cut without Democratic votes.
The Senate budget also authorizes lawmakers to blow a gaping hole in the deficit, roughly twice the size of the 2009 stimulus package that 38 then-Senate Republicans opposed, despite earlier pledges to offset its cost. The House version prescribed a deficit-neutral approach, but House Republicans now are likely to accept the Senate plan in the interest of accelerating work on a tax overhaul.
“I applaud the Senate for passing a budget,” Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said in a statement. “This action keeps us on track to enacting historic tax reform that will mean more jobs, fairer taxes, and bigger paychecks for American families. We want Americans to wake up in the new year with a new tax code, one that is simple and fair.”
My colleague Elise Viebeck lays out the next steps that Republican leaders are already negotiating:

House and Senate leaders — with White House encouragement — were in discussions about making last-minute adjustments to the Senate budget resolution that would allow them to bypass having a conference committee that could drag on for weeks. If House leaders were pleased with the Senate changes, they could simply vote on the precise language in the final Senate resolution, allowing them to pivot directly to the tax-cut negotiations in the coming weeks.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). (AP /J. Scott Applewhite)

And President Trump has been personally lobbying House Republicans this week to swallow the Senate budget to speed up the process. He tweeted praise of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) after passage, and marked the occasion again this morning:

Thursday’s foreshortened vote-a-rama had more to do with positioning than tax policy. Nevertheless, Senate Republicans demonstrated unity they’d do well to bottle as their push enters a make-or-break series of weeks.
No GOP senator broke ranks to side with Democrats as the minority offered a series of amendments aimed at extracting maximum political pain. Those included an amendment from Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) that would prevent tax increases on people making less than $250,000 a year and another from Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) to reward “patriot” employers that invest in American jobs.
Significantly, one change Republicans did adopt would allow lawmakers to bust through spending caps to boost defense spending, a key win for defense hawks like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). Politico: “Under the amendment, the Pentagon's fiscal 2018 budget could be increased to $640 billion — without offsets — if lawmakers reach a deal to raise the current spending caps.”

WP