During an interview with Reuters, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said they may combine their effort to defund (and effectively repeal) Obamacare with their effort to pass sweeping "tax reform" or tax cuts for the rich.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans will consider using planned tax reform to eliminate one of the biggest taxes in Obamacare, if the Senate fails to overturn the healthcare law, a senior Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday.
Kevin Brady, the top Republican on tax policy in the House as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said Republicans will look at the 3.8 percent Net Investment Income Tax in discussions aimed at unveiling a tax reform plan in September. The levy is a weight on economic growth, he said in an interview with Reuters.
In case it's not clear, if you eliminate a major funding mechanism of the law, the law cannot function properly. They may not call this Obamacare "repeal," but that's what it is. You can say it's 'partial repeal' if you're feeling generous.
In any case, I can't say I've ever seen anyone try to make their own jobs harder as much as congressional Republicans apparently enjoy doing so.
As we've seen, repealing Obamacare is not a simple task and passing "tax reform" won't be either. But it does make a certain sort of sense in that their plan for "tax reform" and their plan for repealing Obamacare are both massive tax cuts for the rich.
I can scarcely imagine the CBO score on a bill that combines both, but as a concerned citizen I'd like to encourage them to do this. Both legislative movements could die at the same time and save us all a lot of trouble.
The Way and Means Committee is the committee responsible for writing tax-related legislation, so if the chairman of the committee says they're considering this, there's a pretty good chance it will happen.