Top House Republican sounds alarm: Senate could blow chance to pass Trump tax plan

A key House Republican is already challenging incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), warning that his strategy risks blowing Republicans' best chance to pass President-elect Donald Trump's tax bill, reported NBC News.

This comes a week after reports that Thune wants to split the budget reconciliation process into two parts: one bill to pass an immigration and energy package, and a second later to deal with taxes.

According to the report, Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), who chairs the Ways and Means Committee and is in charge of writing tax legislation, "is warning fellow Republicans against breaking the agenda up into two bills, in which border security and energy policy would come in the first and an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cut law could come in the second. Delaying the tax legislation risks jeopardizing it, Smith and his allies warn, so they want one sweeping package."

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“My goal is to make sure we’re successful in making sure Trump’s tax cuts are made permanent and extended," Smith told his colleagues on the House floor. "That is my No. 1 focus. And I believe the best strategy to get that is to do one large bill.”

The budget reconciliation process allows bills to skip the filibuster in the Senate, but the tradeoff is that every item in them has to serve some budgetary purpose. When the House passed Trump's original tax cut bill in 2017, that rule forced a lot of things to be stricken from the bill, including a proposed repeal of an amendment that prohibits religious organizations from fundraising for political candidates.

President Joe Biden used the same process to pass two of his landmark bills: the pandemic stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, and a sweeping health care and energy investment bill called the Inflation Reduction Act.

House Republicans have been wary of the two-step process, fearful that it creates more opportunity for major pieces of the legislation to be derailed. Last week, Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ) complained, “They have a bigger majority in the Senate than we have in the House."

"And the problem is: Thune is managing his traditional Senate ideas, not realizing we have one or two votes to give on our side," he said.