Matthew Continetti is hoping common sense wins out over raw emotion as Republican lawmakers push to pass their tax reform bill over the final hurdles.
“There’s a lot of momentum behind the tax bill and in Congress in general," Continetti, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, said during a recent appearance on the "Chicago's Morning Answer" radio show co-hosted by Dan Proft, who also is a principal in Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
“Republicans want to end the year with at least one major legislative victory and that has been driving this process from the very beginning,” Continetti said. “I think there are two holdouts, Sen. (Bob) Corker (R-TN) and Sen. (Jeff) Flake (R-AZ) and a third possible holdout in Sen. (James) Lankford (R-OK), and their holdout is about the deficit. Corker and Flake also have a personal grudge against the president. So, it would be ironic if that personal fight would be the dagger in the back of tax reform.”
Matthew Continetti
After nearly a year of being in complete control of Washington and with little to show for it, Republicans have marked the passage of their tax bill through both chambers of Congress with little fanfare.
The bill now heads to conference where representatives from both sides will seek to hammer out differences between the House and Senate versions of the reform legislation.
CNN has reported some of the differences between the two bills is that the Senate bill sunsets tax breaks for individuals in 2025 while the House bill makes all such cuts permanent; the House bill enacts its 20 percent corporate rate in 2018, a full year before the Senate’s version does; and the Senate bill repeals Obamacare's individual mandate while the House bill does not.
In the case of the Senate bill, Continetti said a big step forward came about when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) threw his support behind the measure.
“I think the McCain decision is probably the most important,” he said. “He was the person that scuttled Obamacare this summer.”
In the end, besides the strength of the bill, Continetti hinted Republicans may find it a bit easier to get the measure through now because the other side is so busy dealing with its own issues.
“The Democrats are preoccupied with trying to deal with this frenzy of sexual harassment claims,” Continetti said of the ongoing scandal swirling around Michigan Rep. John Conyers, where several women have stepped forward to allege improprieties on his part.
According to the Washington Post, Conyers announced his resignation Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Continetti admits Republican voters in Alabama had their own tough decision to make as Roy Moore pushed forward in his run for the Senate despite being dogged by allegations that he once regularly dated teenage girls while he was in his 30s.
“For Republicans interested in a tax bill, interested in judicial nominations that vote counts a lot,” he said.
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