House Republicans are forging ahead with plans for another round of tax cuts this year. Senate Republicans say they’ve got other things to deal with, The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reports.
“We’ve got a pretty full agenda,” Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) told Rubin, citing nomination hearings, spending bills and flood insurance. Sen. John Thune (R.-SD) said Republicans probably wouldn’t bring tax legislation up for a vote unless they knew it would pass — an uncertain prospect given that it would require 60 votes but the GOP holds only 51 seats.
Election politics factor in as well since some Democrats might vote to extend individual tax cuts now set to expire after 2025, blunting a Republican line of attack.
Rubin reports that one option for the House tax legislation is to package it in three separate bills: One to extend the expiring tax cuts, one to expand incentives for savings and a third for “policies to promote innovation.” The savings and innovation bills, he writes, “stand a somewhat better chance of becoming law if passed separately.”
