Picking themselves up after the bruising collapse of their health care plan, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress will start this week on a legislative obstacle course that will be even more arduous: The first overhaul of the tax code in three decades.
The New York Times reports Trump’s inability to make good on his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act has made the already daunting challenge of tax reform even more difficult.
Not only has the president’s aura of political invincibility been shattered, but without killing the Affordable Care Act, Republicans will be unable to rewrite the tax code in the sweeping fashion that the president has called for. The grand plans of lower rates, fewer loopholes and a tax on imports may have to be scaled back to a big corporate tax cut and possibly an individual tax cut.
Under pressure to get something done, some Republican deficit hawks appear ready to abandon the fiscal rectitude that they embraced during the Obama administration to help salvage Trump’s agenda.
In a rare shift, Representative Mark Meadows of North Carolina, whose House Freedom Caucus effectively torpedoed the health legislation, said Sunday on ABC’s This Week that he would not protest if tax cuts were not offset by new spending cuts or new streams of revenue, such as an import tax.
