Reuters reported yesterday afternoon that some House Republicans are considering blocking the passage of a budget resolution aimed at facilitating "tax reform" if Republican leadership won't tell them what "reform" is going to look like.
According to Bloomberg, GOP groups have begun spending on ads to promote "tax reform" even though no one knows what "reform" will include and the ads will target some the same congressmen who say they want more details.
The ad is scheduled to air mostly in competitive districts, and is aimed at giving political cover to endangered House Republicans to cast what could be a difficult vote in support of a tax bill. The Republicans include Colorado’s Mike Coffman, Iowa’s Rod Blum, California’s David Valadao, New York’s John Katko and New Jersey’s Leonard Lance, the group said.
Two other names stand out: North Carolina’s Mark Meadows and Ohio’s Jim Jordan, the leaders of the Freedom Caucus, who have been criticizing House Republican leaders over the lack of tax details that have been released.
The initial $2.5 million television ad buy purchased by the American Action Network calls for simplifying the tax code and cutting taxes for "working families," but those things are not even being considered. Everything we know tells us Republicans are strongly considering raising taxes on working families to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
Furthermore, their idea of "simplifying the tax code" involves eliminating taxes that only the rich people pay, such as the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. They are not considering eliminating any of the taxes that average people pay, but they are considering making average people pay more taxes.
Their end game, if they can ever get to it, is to cut taxes for the rich. That's it. Everything they're considering it meant to make tax cuts for the rich possible. There is no other agenda.
Even if Republican leadership is able to convince enough of their members to vote for a tax increase on the majority of their own constituents, that won't cover the enormous cost of their tax cuts for the rich because the truth is the bottom half of the country just doesn't have that much money. A significant portion and possibly even a majority of their tax cuts for the rich will be deficit-financed even if they raise taxes on others.
The most likely scenario from my point of view is still the passage of tax cuts that are entirely deficit-financed.