WASHINGTON -- Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House said Tuesday that they are coalescing around a unified tax plan and are aiming to pass a final bill as early as next week.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican, said House and Senate negotiators were making progress in their effort to agree on a final tax bill.
"We don't have it right this minute, but we're getting closer," Cornyn said. "We've pingponged a number of offers and counteroffers back and forth."
The movement toward a final agreement comes as the bipartisan conference committee is scheduled to hold its one public meeting, set for this afternoon. While the public hearing will give Republicans and Democrats a final chance to publicly debate the merits of a $1.5 trillion tax cut, it is not expected to alter the trajectory of the bill or its details.
"We look forward to scheduling this bill, after they are done with their work, posting it, giving it appropriate time so everyone can read it, and pass it, sending it to the president's desk," said Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the House majority leader.
Republicans are speeding ahead with the legislation despite criticism from Democrats that the bill hurts the middle class, benefits the rich and creates a raft of new loopholes that corporations and wealthy Americans can exploit.
A Tuesday special election for Senate in Alabama added to the pressure, with Doug Jones, a Democrat, up against Roy Moore, a Republican judge who has been accused of child molestation. Republicans' majority in the Senate is already narrow, at 52-48.
House and Senate Republicans have been working privately to hash out the final details of the tax plan, and they hope to hold a vote next week. Republican leaders want to finalize a consensus bill within the next few days and release its text Friday. If all goes according to plan, the Senate would take up the bill Monday, and the House would follow Tuesday or Wednesday.
Remaining sticking points include whether to retain the House bill's cap on the mortgage interest deduction, whether to scrap or keep the corporate alternative minimum tax and how low to set the corporate tax rate.
Aides said lawmakers were moving toward allowing homeowners to deduct interest on mortgages up to $750,000, higher than the $500,000 that the House bill allowed. The current limit is $1 million.
The housing industry lobbied hard against changes to the deduction, arguing that it would hurt home values. The provision would not affect current mortgages.
Among other tax breaks, negotiators were aiming to eliminate the alternative minimum tax for corporations, a big sticking point for the business community, aides said.
And lawmakers were settling on a corporate rate of 21 percent, higher than the 20 percent corporate rate passed by each chamber but still a large decrease from the current 35 percent corporate rate.
GOP aides stressed that no changes would be final until the legislation has formally been filed.
LINGERING ISSUES
Among the most politically sensitive lingering issues is how to treat the state and local tax deduction, which is capped at $10,000 in property taxes in both the House and Senate bills.
Lawmakers have been working through possible compromises that would let people continue to deduct a certain amount of property or income taxes, but Republicans still run the risk of raising taxes on a number of middle-income constituents.
Lawmakers must keep the cost of the bill to $1.5 trillion if they are to pass it along party lines. Scaling back the state and local tax deduction appears to be a risk some are willing to take.
"Will there be some outliers who pay more in taxes? Yes," Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said Tuesday on CNBC. "There are some people who will pay more because they live in very high-tax jurisdictions."
Congressional Republicans are in advanced talks to lower the top tax rate for individuals from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, in part because of complaints from wealthy taxpayers in New York and elsewhere about the possible removal of the state and local tax deduction, three people familiar with the negotiations said.
That rate change, if finalized, would amount to a major tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. The people insisted on anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
This week, several independent "dynamic" scores of the tax bills, which include the potential revenue-raising effects of economic growth, found that the proposed legislation would still add to the deficit after a decade.
The Treasury Department released a one-page study Monday that showed the tax plan more than paying for itself, but only if economic growth averages 2.9 percent a year over the next 10 years and if other economic policies proposed by President Donald Trump's administration are enacted. Most mainstream economists think such a high rate of economic growth is not possible.
While the report was criticized by many tax experts as unrealistic, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., on Tuesday praised the Treasury Department's analysis.
"I think that estimate makes a lot of sense," Ryan said, arguing that the economic models used by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation were less reflective of reality.
Meanwhile, Democrats have been assailing Republicans for recklessly adding to the debt.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, dismissed the study as a political document.
"It's no more than a thinly veiled attempt by the Trump administration to cover up an economic agenda that showers corporations with goodies while taking money and health care away from those who need it most," Wyden said.
Separately Tuesday, 12 governors of both parties urged Congress to reauthorize funding for a popular children's health insurance program as soon as possible.
The recommendation involving the Children's Health Insurance Program came in a letter to congressional leaders Tuesday.
Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Democratic Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper led the letter-writing effort. It was joined by the governors of Alaska, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Virginia.
Fresh funding for the $14 billion Children's Health Insurance Program program ran out Oct. 1. Since then, some states have relied on unspent funds. Others got a short-term reprieve in the two-week spending bill Trump signed Friday.
The governors said funding the program "without disruption" is something they can all agree on.
The House and Senate bills have a number of differences that must be resolved.
For example, the Senate bill retained seven income-tax brackets for individuals and families, while the House bill collapsed those brackets down to four.
The House and Senate bills also tax partnerships and sole proprietorships much differently.
Congressional leaders have already signaled how they plan to resolve some differences between the two bills. For example, the Senate bill would repeal the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, while the House bill would not. But House leaders have suggested they like that change to the health care law and support including it in the final bill.
Information for this article was contributed by Alan Rappeport and Thomas Kaplan of The New York Times; by Erica Werner and Damian Paletta of The Washington Post; and by Stephen Ohlemacher, Marcy Gordon and other staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 12/13/2017