The long-rumored Republican tax-cuts bill is scheduled to be unveiled late Thursday morning in a press conference. Ahead of this official release, House leadership has provided the outline of what they're talking about doing, but it's far from what is going to be the final package.
The bill keeps a top rate of 39.6 percent for the highest-earners and roughly doubles the standard deduction for middle class families. It expands the child tax credit to $1,600 from $1,000 and will not make any changes to the 401(k) plans. It does propose changes to the popular mortgage interest deduction. Under the Republican plan, existing homeowners can keep their mortgage interest deduction but future purchases will be capped at $500,000. The bill cuts the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, from 35 percent. […]
One of the biggest flash points will be how the bill treats the state and local tax deduction, which lawmakers are proposing to cap at $10,000. That will not be enough for Republicans in some high-tax states, where middle-class families make heavy use of the deduction.
The compromise, as it had been sketched out this week, would preserve the deduction for property taxes, but not for state and local income taxes, and it appeared as if there would be a cap on the deduction. But at first glance, it did not appear as if that was enough to win over all of the New York and New Jersey members.
All of this is subject to change, as an increasingly restive House Republican conference weighs in, and the leadership seems to be following the path they forged on their Obamacare repeal failure—writing this thing on the fly as they try to figure out the complicated math of getting to 218 votes. So this is more or less a placeholder as the "Republican leaders to work out the details of a new set of revenue-raisers that would be inserted in the bill before the full House votes on it." That's where the problem is for many members. It's leadership shutting out rank-and-file, and you know how well that works.
“Anything that gets done in a cloak of secrecy is certainly not what an open and deliberative body should do,” warned House Freedom Caucus leader Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
Even before this outline was released, the Kochs were throwing bombs and making threats, making sure that their pet maniacs in the House, the Freedom Caucus, know what's expected of them. But leadership's got one ace up their sleeve—a provision written just for Trump, repealing the estate tax in 2024 and getting rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax. The AMT cost Trump $31 million in 2005, the only year of taxes he's made public. Maybe that will take some of the sting out of fact that they're calling "The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act" instead of Trump's chosen title, "The Cut Cut Cut Act."