There’s a growing faction inside the Senate Republican Conference, and it looks like bad news for Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump: The devil-may-care caucus.

Unbeholden to Republican orthodoxy and freed from the burdens of imminent reelection campaigns, more GOP senators are flexing their independence in the aftermath of the party’s failed effort to repeal Obamacare. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee is the latest addition to the ranks. Days after announcing he would not seek reelection in 2018, he threatened to buck Republicans on tax reform and stood by his earlier criticism of Trump as lacking the stability or competence to be president.


Corker joins longtime GOP contrarians John McCain, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Rand Paul in a group that’s willing to vote principle over party line, even if it means sinking some of the party’s cherished agenda items. Roy Moore might be next: The rabble-rousing conservative is favored to win an open Alabama Senate seat after being bombarded by millions of dollars in McConnell-sanctioned campaign ads.

McConnell struggled mightily — and unsuccessfully — to corral his narrow, 52-member majority to back a bill to repeal Obamacare. Now, the swelling number of Republican rebels could spell trouble for the party’s hopes of passing a major tax bill, and potentially imperil their majority.

In an interview, Corker acknowledged his freedom from facing reelection made it a “little easier” to take on his party. He’s declared he will oppose any tax plan that adds “one penny” to the deficit, which the GOP proposal is widely expected to do. Not only that, Corker told Politico, he’d “rail against” any such plan.

“People have lost their heads since the election,” Corker said of his party’s lurch from fiscal conservatism. “It’s a debate about the future. Are we folks who care about leaving this country better for future generations? Or are we all about ‘party-time’ here, to make ourselves beloved by people not having to pay taxes but throwing kids under the bus down the road?”

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Leaders are already chafing at the resistance forming to a cause that was supposed to unify the party after the wounds opened by health care. Asked to respond to Corker’s criticism, Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) wound up to lay into his colleague: “Anybody who says you can’t have any deficit, is not living …” he started, before catching himself.

“Let me put it this way, is acknowledging that it’s impossible to even get there unless you have” deficits, Hatch said.

Republicans are hoping budget scorekeepers will eventually mollify Corker by showing that cutting taxes will spur an economic boom. But the problem is much broader than one senator. At least five Republicans are seriously viewed by GOP leaders as potential “no” votes on tax reform. Only three of them could cost the Republicans a centerpiece of their agenda. And that’s before Moore potentially arrives in December and a bill has been written.

The issue for the GOP is that while the entire 52-member caucus is frustrated with inaction, there’s no one to unify them. Trump regularly strays from pushing his agenda to personal feuds. And both he and congressional leadership are broadly unpopular, emboldening individual members to go their own way.

Plus, McCain, Paul and Murkowski were just reelected, Corker is retiring, and Collins might run for governor.

“Although they like to assert their independence at times, the team’s got to produce results if we’re going to continue to keep our majority,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican.

While the rest of the party swivels to tax reform, McCain is privately urging the GOP to commit to a budget deal that boosts military spending by December, according to two sources familiar with the matter. That could delay tax reform, which GOP leaders are hoping to cram through by the end of the year.

On substance, McCain could be a separate problem: He voted against the Bush tax cuts last decade because they disproportionately aided the wealthy. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded last week that the new GOP tax plan would have a similar impact, putting Republicans on defense before the battle’s even been joined.

“Is it accurate to say as some of these reports have said that this is about tax cuts for the top 1 percent? It’s not,” Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said.

Paul is complaining about analyses that show some taxes would go up under the GOP tax framework. The plan would slash corporate taxes from 35 percent to 20 percent, expand the standard deduction and cut taxes on unincorporated businesses. An aide said Paul is worried “that it won’t be a tax cut for a lot of people,” and GOP leaders are taking him seriously.

Yet satisfying him might require deeper tax cuts and more long-term debt, which would turn off Corker. Asked how to square the two, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn deadpanned: “Piece of cake.”

Perhaps knowing that Murkowski will be a tough vote to get, Republican leaders offered the Alaska senator a sweetener: raising money by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. But Murkowski declined to say whether that move — which McCain and other senators would likely oppose — would do the trick. “I’m not in a situation where I’m saying, ‘OK, if you don’t include this, I’m not going to be there’” on tax reform, she said.

Collins has been especially critical of the GOP’s reliance on the party-line “reconciliation” tool to jam through legislation, the same reason she cited in opposing Obamacare repeal proposals.

“I would very much like for us to try to produce a bipartisan tax bill,” she said.

Republican leaders are already privately fretting that her vote, as well as McCain’s and Paul’s, are going to be difficult to get. They are slightly more confident about Murkowski and hope to finish tax reform before Moore arrives.

But Corker is a real wild card. Though he’s open to the possibility that tax cuts would create enough growth to offset deficits, he suggested there are limits to that argument.

“I’m now nervous about where this goes,” Corker said. “I hope that in the end if it’s a big deficit creator, then our caucus will not support it.”

