A Joint Committee on taxation analysis predicts the tax bill would increase the deficit by $1 trillion, which could be problematic for lawmakers like Sen. Bob Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Republicans rewriting tax bill hours before possible vote Senate GOP leaders are still making major changes to the plan in order to win over several hold-outs.

Senate Republicans are frantically re-writing their massive tax overhaul to win over wavering senators just hours before a potential vote.

GOP leaders had hoped to pass the bill late Thursday night or early Friday morning, but were forced to delay action after a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian threw out a crucial provision to prevent hundreds of billions in deficit spending. But in good news for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), two holdouts, said they would back the bill Friday morning after getting assurances the bill would change to their liking.


It’s still not clear when the Senate will vote — or what they’ll actually be voting on, as key pieces of the multi-trillion-dollar bill are being rewritten in hopes of getting a major legislative victory to President Donald Trump’s desk by Christmas.

Republicans were sent scrambling after the Senate parliamentarian told GOP senators Thursday that a key proposal for deficit hawks — a trigger to raise tax rates if sufficient economic growth did not materialize — would not pass procedural muster and would need to find something else to satisfy the bloc of deficit hawk holdouts, led by Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.).

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“It doesn’t look like the trigger is going to work, according to the parliamentarian,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said. “So we have an alternative, frankly: a tax increase we don’t want to do to try to address Sen. Corker’s concerns.”

Corker told reporters: “My understanding is, that the parliamentarian has ruled against it so they’re just going to automatically put [tax increases] in, period.” Corker and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said the revenue raised with tax increases — which senators say would kick in six years after the enactment of the tax legislation — would total about $350 billion, although Cornyn suggested that figure may need to go higher.

Late Thursday, Republicans huddled with leadership and tax policy staff to work on a solution.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who supports the current package, estimated that Republicans needed to find an additional $370 billion to $400 billion within their package to placate concerns about increased deficits.

"What we're trying to do right now is get to the point where nobody's going to get exactly what they want but enough for us to get the bill passed," he told reporters.

The sudden need to regroup came after extended drama on the Senate floor Thursday during an otherwise mundane procedural vote, when Corker, Flake and Johnson initially withheld their support on a vote to move forward with the bill. Ultimately, they aligned with their party, but it suggested real concerns remained, including friction among Republicans over whether to stick to the 20 percent corporate tax rate rate insisted on by the White House.

Johnson withheld his vote during the standoff in exchange for votes on his amendments, including one that would further increase a tax deduction for pass-through businesses to around 25 percent.

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The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate and lower rates for many, though not all, individuals. Senate Republicans have said their plan would boost the economy but not by nearly as much as some lawmakers would have hoped, a new official analysis shows.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation said Thursday that the GOP plan would fall well short of covering its $1.5 trillion cost through additional economic growth; it predicted $407 billion in additional revenue would come in by boosting the economy by 0.8 percent over the next decade.

That would mean a $1 trillion deficit increase, which is problematic for lawmakers like Corker, who has said he would vote against a tax bill that increased the deficit. A Senate Finance Committee aide noted that the analysis was "incomplete" since the bill text has yet to be finalized.

Democrats have blasted Republicans for rushing the bill to the floor while considering significant eleventh-hour changes to the sprawling tax code rewrite.

“This is tax, one of the most complicated issues before us,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor Thursday. “These changes and the way the majority leader is handling this make it impossible for any independent analyst to get a good look at the bill and how it would impact our country.”

Yet Sen. John McCain, who gave Republicans a boost earlier in the day when he broke his long silence and said he would back the legislation, signaled he was satisfied with the process, noting the bill went through “a thorough markup in the Senate Finance Committee.”

The Arizona Republican, who helped tank the party’s Obamacare repeal efforts earlier this year, had said going through a regular legislative process was one of his major concerns.

But it was clear Senate Republicans still have myriad issues to resolve to lock down at least 50 votes to ensure final passage of the tax bill on the floor. Republicans are using powerful budget procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

Other key GOP votes such as Corker, Flake and Susan Collins of Maine have yet to commit to the bill, for varying reasons. Johnson and Daines have been trying to secure even more generous treatment of small businesses after extracting a boost in an earlier round of negotiations.

Collins plans to offer a half-dozen amendments, including one that would hike the proposed corporate tax rate of 20 percent to restore a deduction for up to $10,000 for property taxes. She is among a handful of Republican senators who say they are open to raising the proposed corporate rate in order to fund other tax provisions in the bill.

The moderate senator is also seeking to extract some health care assurances because the current tax bill repeals Obamacare's requirement that everyone carry insurance or pay a penalty. She has pushed for two separate health care bills — one to stabilize the markets and another to protect pre-existing conditions and use high-risk pools — to be grafted to a short-term spending bill that would need to pass before government funding expires Dec. 8.

Conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 Republicans that frequently buck their party's leadership, rejected the notion of supporting those health care bills.

Members of the group also said they opposed amendments that would raise the proposed corporate income tax rate above 20 percent, and bristled at the idea of a delayed cut, which the Senate's bill does largely due to budgetary rules.

"It's a great strategy if you’re looking to put the Democrats in the majority and give them credit for what we did," Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said of the Senate's proposed one-year delay to a corporate tax cut.

Brian Faler, Bernie Becker and Elana Schor contributed to this report.