Republicans strangle bill to block Trump's IRS immunity deal

The Senate Finance Committee just voted down a check on the Trump administration's efforts to shield him from tax audits, according to a new report.

Republicans in the Senate Finance Committee defeated the Democrat's block in a 14-13 vote as part of committee work on a broader tax-administration bill, Politico reported Thursday.

While Democrats argued Trump's audit immunity arrangement amounted to an abuse of power, Republicans claimed the Senate committee wasn't the correct venue to address it.

“This is not the place,” said committee chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID). “If this bill were to become the vehicle where this issue is resolved, it would achieve basically making this bill a partisan bill” and that “would turn this bill into a bill that has a much dimmer future for becoming law.”

Lawmakers later approved the full bill at 26-1 with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) casting the lone dissenting vote.

“No other taxpayer, ever, has gotten this kind of a deal,” Warren said. “I cannot support a bill that rubber stamps Donald Trump’s corruption. Congress needs to stand up and put a stop to it.”

The audit immunity plan originated in May, when the administration proposed exempting Trump and his family from IRS audits in exchange for dropping a lawsuit against the agency over a contractor's leak of Trump's tax information to the New York Times.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who sits on both the Finance and Judiciary committees, has pushed for changes to narrow the plan's scope — limiting it to the parties named in Trump's lawsuit and to tax returns already filed, rather than future ones.

Cornyn has said Blanche agreed to those terms verbally during his confirmation hearing but has not yet put them in writing, prompting the Judiciary Committee to postpone a scheduled vote on Blanche's nomination while negotiations continue.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another Republican critical of the original immunity plan, said he believes the administration is negotiating in good faith to resolve the outstanding objections.

It remains unclear whether any revised version will be enough to satisfy Democratic critics of the arrangement.