When Republican President-elect Donald Trump begins his second term this Monday, January 20, his party will have small majorities in both branches of Congress. Tax policy will be among Trump’s legislative priorities, but according to The Hill’s Alexander Bolton, getting Republicans in the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives to reach an agreement may be challenging in the weeks ahead.
Bolton, in an article published on Friday, January 17 — only three days before Trump’s inauguration — reports, “House conservative proposals to raise corporate taxes to offset the cost of President-elect Trump’s tax package are going over like lead balloons in the Senate, where Republicans are warning their House counterparts to back off. The Senate GOP argues that hiking corporate taxes could dampen economic activity, lead to foreign takeovers of U.S. corporations and result in job loss.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma) is among the GOP senators who opposes House proposals to increase corporate tax rates.
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Bolton quotes Mullin as saying, “Absolutely not. We were trying to be competitive on the world stage when we dropped it to 21 percent. To raise that is not the way to get an economy going.”
Members of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, Bolton notes, have proposed raising the cap on SALT (state and local tax) deductions “for individuals and families by restricting state and local tax deductions for corporations.” But Mullin and other Senate Republicans, according to Bolton, are rejecting that proposal as well.
“To offset SALT,” Bolton quotes Mullin as saying, “we don’t raise corporate taxes to do that. That’s not how we do that. Corporate taxes is the people that employ individuals. It doesn’t just affect large corporations.”
Meanwhile, in the House, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) — a major budget hawk — is open to increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent.
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Roy told The Hill, “I’m on the record as saying everything should be on the table, and I’m on the record of having said, ‘Why should we just allow corporate taxes to stay in place, or think about lowering them, if.… we’re not doing what we need to do on the individual tax rate side or if we’re not balancing the budget or being deficit neutral?'”
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Read The Hill’s full article at this link.
