If Congress doesn’t pass tax reform, there could be significant economic consequences, a leading senator and business leader said Tuesday.

“We are doing things differently with this bill than we did on the health care bill that ended up in disaster, so I feel like we’ve got a shot at getting it done this year. But there are something like 33 legislative work days left,” Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., told a gathering Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation.

“The reason it’s so important to get it done this year is, if we don’t get it done this year, I believe we run the risk disappointing the expectation that is already built into the bond market and the stock market and that is that something is going to happen this year.”

Perdue, a former CEO of Reebok and the only former Fortune 500 CEO in Congress, said the pressure on Congress is not what it should be.

“The sense of urgency is Washington is not the same sense of urgency I lived with in the private sector,” Perdue said. “Given the fact that we did not get health care passed, I think on the Republican side, there is even more pressure to get this done. … When you look at the pro-worker intent, there is Democratic support for a lot of this.”

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are backing a proposal that would increase the deduction for child care and caring for elderly adults; make the first $12,000 for individuals and first $24,000 for married couples income tax-free; eliminate the penalty for businesses bringing back earnings from overseas to the United States; simplify the tax-filing process so that most Americans could file their returns on a single sheet of paper; cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent; and eliminate the estate tax, which critics refer to as the “death tax.”

The United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates the average corporate tax rate is 23 percent.

An Ernst and Young study found that if the United States was in line with the OECD average of 23 percent, over the last decade, the United States would have had 4,700 more businesses stay rather than go overseas. Further, the study, cited by Josh Bolten, the president of the Business Roundtable, asserts a more competitive rate would have brought about $200 billion direct investment in the United States.

“So the corporate rate alone has really made the United States uncompetitive and incented companies to move overseas and it’s put a burden not really so much on CEO or the shareholders, because our companies are still profitable,” said Bolten, a former White House chief of staff and director of Office of Management and Budget under President George W. Bush, during The Heritage Foundation event. “The burden falls on the wage earners because with that high tax rate, our companies are not able to invest as much in the United States as they otherwise would.”

The Business Roundtable also looked at what would happen if Congress succeeds or fails to pass tax reform by the end of the year. The Roundtable survey found 76 percent of CEOs said they will hire more if tax reform goes through and 82 percent will invest in expansion. However, if it fails or is long delayed, a majority said they will have to take planned hiring and planned capital investment off the books, Bolten said.

“There is a big upside to tax reform succeeding, Senator, but there is a big downside too,” Bolten added, “because many of them have already baked into their plans increased hiring and increased capital spending based on the expectation tax reform will go through. If the tax reform fails or is long delayed, there is going to be hiring and spending that comes off the books and that will have a real impact on the economy.”