STILL LOOKING AHEAD: In any event, there’s no doubt that the current situation has lots of interested parties wondering how the Senate will ultimately handle the tax bill. Could enough Republicans peel off to give the tax bill the 60 votes it needs to proceed in the Senate? Are there any tweaks that could be made to the measure that could satisfy those Senate GOP skeptics while maintaining at least most of the legislation’s broad bipartisan support? Might Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seek to attach the tax bill to spending legislation as soon as within the next several weeks? No matter what, the internal dynamics between Senate Republicans will be interesting to watch, particularly if the tax bill is put on the floor as a standalone measure or attached to a spending bill. Some of the most critical GOP senators of the tax bill, like Thom Tillis of North Carolina, have bipartisan bona fides and would be most likely to be team players or support bipartisan spending measures. Meanwhile, some of the Senate Republicans who have praised the tax bill, like Josh Hawley of Missouri, have been more likely to buck their leadership. WHAT WE DO NOW KNOW: If nothing else, Smith is going lots of places to try and marshal support for his tax plan. In essence, Smith is playing both the inside and outside game. The Ways and Means chair has been making plenty of rounds to Fox News, as tax bill supporters try to get more of those Senate Republicans on board. Smith also spoke last week to the Ripon Society, a Republican organization, in which he at least hinted at some of the frustration that tax bill supporters are feeling toward Crapo and other Senate Republicans. In that speech, Smith spoke publicly about how involved Crapo was in the talks over the tax bill, and asserted that Crapo requested changes to the so-called lookback provision, as Pro Tax’s Benjamin Guggenheim noted — which allows people claiming the child credit to use either income from the previous or current year. Crapo requested that the lookback provision cover only two years, in Smith’s account, and not three years — though that account also happens to be fully disputed by Crapo’s camp. The inside game: Smith and his staff also fanned out across the Senate last week to try and sell the tax bill, though they did still find some pockets of resistance. THAT OTHER TAX BILL: Nothing is set in stone yet, but the House currently is not scheduled to consider the proposal to temporarily raise the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions. That bill was a consolation prize for GOP lawmakers from New York, who had pushed for SALT relief to be part of the bipartisan tax bill before it passed the House. The legislation is fairly modest — it would temporarily raise the cap to $20,000 for joint filers, just for 2023 and just for couples making up to $500,000 last year. It’s basically inconceivable that a standalone bill to lift the SALT limits would become law in this Congress, where perhaps not a single Senate Republican supports that idea. But there are also reasons to wonder whether even this somewhat limited SALT bill can pass the House, even as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has started raising the issue — for starters because plenty of progressives don’t love the idea of raising the cap, because that would largely benefit the better off.
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