Trump, McConnell: Republican tax plan could bleed into next year

President Donald Trump on Monday raised the possibility that Republicans may fall short of their goal of rewriting the tax code by the end of this year.

“I would like to see it be done this year,” he told reporters. “But don’t forget it took years for the Reagan administration to get taxes done — I’ve been here for nine months.”


“We could have a long way to go but that’s OK,” he added.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, appearing alongside Trump at a White House news conference, also tamped down the bullish timeline laid out by some administration officials and congressional leaders.

“The goal is to get it done this calendar year, but it is important to remember that Obama signed Obamacare in March of year two [of his first term], Obama signed Dodd-Frank in July of year two,” McConnell said.

“We’re going to get this job done, and the goal is to get it done by the end of the year,” said McConnell.

Their comments are a rare acknowledgment by Republican leaders that their plans to rewrite the code may take longer than anticipated. They’re anxious to complete work on the code, their top legislative priority, by the close of this year, before next year’s midterm elections begin to loom. Last week, House Speaker Paul Ryan even raised the possibility of lawmakers working until this Christmas on a plan.

Speaking separately Monday in an interview with a Milwaukee-area radio station, Ryan was far more confident lawmakers would remain on schedule, predicting the House will pass its version of the plan within weeks.

"We'll mark it up and pass it — so by early November, we'll get it out of the House, we'll send it to the Senate," he told WTMJ. "The goal: Get law in December so that we wake up with New Year's and a new tax code in 2018."

Although Republicans have not yet released a detailed plan, they’ve already run into a number of hurdles, including objections by some blue-state Republicans that their plans to scrap a long-standing deduction for state and local taxes will mean tax hikes on their constituents. Republicans are now massaging those provisions.

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In the Senate, lawmakers have signaled a willingness to go their own way on a number of issues, including how to tax corporations, whether to dump the estate tax and how much any plan should cost.

Republicans have also been stung by an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center showing the top 1 percent of earners would be the biggest winners under their proposal, which Republicans released in framework form last month.

“We are doing minor adjustments,” Trump told reporters. “We want to make sure that the middle class is the biggest beneficiary of the tax cuts.”

The next step for Republicans is agreeing on a budget, which will determine how much they can spend on their tax proposal. The Senate aims to approve this week its plan penciling in $1.5 trillion for tax cuts, which would have to be merged with a competing House proposal calling for a deficit-neutral tax rewrite as well as accompanying spending cuts.

