GOP Leaders Don't Expect White House Tax-Plan Details - Bloomberg

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Republican congressional leaders don’t expect to release a joint tax plan with the White House next month, and they’ll rely instead on House and Senate tax-writing committees to solve the big tax questions that remain unanswered, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The so-called Big Six -- made up of White House officials and congressional leaders involved in tax negotiations -- jointly released a two-page statement in July that outlined a broad set of agreed-upon tax principles. Specifics, including such basic matters as where to set the corporate tax rate and how to set up individual tax brackets, have yet to emerge.

Trump’s administration has sent mixed signals about how many details to expect as Congress returns from its monthlong recess next month. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said during a July interview on ABC that the objective was to have “a full-blown release of the plan” in the beginning of September. Then, a White House official said earlier this month that September would see the release of a new tax document that would provide at least some additional detail.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Thursday provided no new specifics on how Trump plans to push for tax legislation, but said “tax relief for middle-class Americans is a huge priority for this administration.” She told reporters during a briefing to expect movement on tax reform “in very short order” and perhaps as soon as next week.

Congressional leaders now view the Big Six’s broad July statement as having built the four walls of the house and believe it’s the job of congressional tax writers to furnish it, according to one of the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.

The shift comes during a chaotic month for the White House that has seen President Donald Trump’s attention diverted to public feuds with Republican senators, including Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and to weathering heavy criticism over his response to a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Health-Care Lesson

The change may run counter to what Trump’s advisers and GOP lawmakers have called the importance of having a unified plan among the White House, the Senate and the House -- a lesson they learned from the failure of legislation aimed at repealing the 2010 Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare.

It’s also a departure from former White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s comments in March that the Trump administration would be “driving the train” on efforts to rewrite the tax code. The president is involved but isn’t expected to make any imminent tax announcements, according to a White House official.

National Economic Council Gary Cohn had said previously that a tax framework would be released after Labor Day. More recently, he indicated the White House was pushing tax efforts back to the hill.

“Remember, tax legislation starts in the House,” Cohn said at a press conference Aug. 15. “We’ve got a great, I would say, skeleton. We need the Ways and Means Committee to put some muscle and skin on the skeleton and drive tax reform forward.”

Fall Hearings

House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady has said he expects hearings and markups on tax legislation this fall. The Senate Finance Committee is planning to do the same, with Chairman Orrin Hatch promising his own hearings and a markup this fall.

After lawmakers return from their August recess, they must focus first on several must-pass bills to keep the federal government open and avert a default on U.S. debt -- making it unlikely that tax legislation would get serious attention until October.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, during an appearance at a Boeing Co. plant in Washington, repeated his goal of passing a comprehensive tax bill by the end of 2017.

Later, during an interview with CNBC, Ryan said Trump and congressional leaders are “eye to eye” in terms of agreeing on tax issues.

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