At a large gathering last week of conservatives and business groups pushing tax reform, one lawmaker in particular was on the mind of President Donald Trump’s top lobbyist: Rand Paul.

Marc Short, the White House’s legislative affairs director, singled out the libertarian-leaning senator as crucial to the tax reform push, according to two sources familiar with the meeting at the American Action Network. And he advised those in the room to put immense pressure on Paul and make his vote on the Republican budget — required to pass tax reform along party lines — as difficult as possible so he’ll fall in line on taxes, those sources said. Paul is widely believed to be a “no” vote on the budget.


The Kentucky Republican’s outspoken opposition to a leadership-backed Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill and the backup Graham-Cassidy plan helped demolish the GOP’s health care agenda. And now Republicans are worried that the contrarian Paul is going to do the same on tax reform by coming out early and vocally against their work, according to two allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

“You have to assume he’s going to be a no on everything,” one of them griped.

The Senate will consider the budget teeing up tax reform in mid-October, and Paul is privately sending signals he’ll vote against it, just as he did on the budget setting up Obamacare repeal in January, when he was the lone Republican senator to do so.

Paul said in an interview that he’s undecided on both the budget and the tax plan blueprint, but he unleashed a torrent of criticism at the tax proposal nonetheless.

“The danger for this bill right now is the pay-for may be a middle-class tax hike. And if that’s that, it’s going to be a real problem,” Paul said. “If you lower the taxes on the rich and lower the taxes on the poor and then say, ‘Oh, it’s going to be revenue neutral,’ we’ve got to raise somebody’s taxes to pay for it.”

White House officials are growing frustrated with Paul and view him as obstructing Trump’s agenda. Trump has called Paul repeatedly and told advisers that he will come around on tax reform, officials said. But Paul has shown he has no problem bucking Trump — opposing him not only on health care, but also on continuing the war in Afghanistan and making more foreign weapons sales.

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The president seems personally stung, two officials said, when Paul votes against Trump’s nominees and health care plans, because Trump likes him and thinks “he should be on the team,” in the words of one administration official.

McConnell has told Trump that he shouldn’t expect Paul to support the tax bill, but Trump won’t accept that, according to a person familiar with their conversations. So Short spoke personally with Paul this week about tax reform and agreed to try to work with Paul to get to him to “yes.” It’s not clear whether the White House can give Paul what he wants, but the two men agreed to try.

“Sen. Rand Paul will continue to advocate for a tax cut for all. He is not trying to dictate exact policy. There is a wide variety of scenarios that he would support, but raising taxes on the middle class should be a nonstarter,” said Sergio Gor, a spokesman for Paul. “Too many individuals in congressional leadership are more worried about bullet points on a white paper instead of delivering on a promise to actually cut taxes for the American people.”

Republicans have yet to write a bill, but GOP leaders and the White House have presented a framework to lower corporate taxes, expand the standard deduction and restructure income tax brackets. Paul has repeatedly cited a nonpartisan Tax Policy Center analysis that found that some in the middle class would pay more in taxes under the plan.

Leadership allies are already sniping at Paul. The Wall Street Journal editorial board singled him out last week over his concerns about a tax increase on the middle class, calling him one of the “Republicans who saved Obamacare” and demanding that he and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) stop putting “parochial interests over policy improvements.”

Paul already feels the blame of the health care debacle and lashed out at the suggestion that he’s the problem, instead pointing to the handful of senators who once voted to repeal Obamacare with no replacement before voting against that proposal this year.

“It’s funny how a lot of the establishment turned and tried to blame it on me,” Paul said. “I’m the one that’s actually voted every time to repeal the damn thing. It’s the people who changed their minds on it that are really the problem.”

Paul’s colleagues have grown used to his lonely dissents, from his #StandWithRand filibuster protesting drone strikes in 2013 to his brief shutdown of surveillance programs in 2015 to his vote in January against Trump’s CIA director just days after the president was sworn in. As McCain put it in a recent interview: “He’s usually against everything.”

“I’ve always found him to take a position and stick to it pretty strongly,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “I’ve never found Rand to be a guy that plays the political game. He’s going to do what he thinks is right.”

Paul’s legislative eccentricities have been magnified by the GOP’s narrow majority even as the party controls the White House, the Senate and the House. As few as three GOP senators can stop tax reform, just as they did on health care. And there’s already worry among Republicans that McCain, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and a handful of other senators could vote against the nascent tax plan.

A vote against the budget next week would be seen as a clear signal that Paul may be impossible to get. He disliked the GOP’s “shell” budget passed earlier this year to allow for Obamacare repeal on party lines, and he has not seemed much warmer toward this version, which envisions a tax bill that expands the deficit by $1.5 trillion over a decade.

Paul will likely have an opportunity to amend the budget on the Senate floor, and, if past is prologue, he’ll be looking to dramatically decrease federal spending. If that effort is rejected, it could be hard for him to vote “yes.”

“We’re looking at it,” Paul said. “We want to make it something we can be proud of.”

