House Republicans Pass $1.5 Trillion Tax Overhaul; Senate Set To Vote Tuesday Night

Updated at 3:14 p.m. ET

The House passed the final version of Republicans' $1.5 trillion tax overhaul on Tuesday afternoon, by a vote of 227-203.

Senate Republicans are now set to debate the bill and could vote Tuesday evening. That means that by the time many Americans go to bed on Tuesday, Congress may have passed Republicans' tax overhaul bill.

The House vote fell largely along party lines. No Democrats voted in favor of the bill, as was the case when the House passed its initial version of the bill in November. Twelve House Republicans voted against the bill.

The Senate bill also appears likely to be passed largely along party lines. No Democrats voted for the bill in either the House or Senate's initial votes, and the bill did not undergo any major changes in conference committee, where the differences between the House and Senate versions were reconciled.

Just before the vote, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., spoke, casting the bill as a long-awaited conservative victory that would benefit American workers.

"My colleagues, this is a day I have looked forward to for a very long time," he said. "We are about to achieve some big things—things that the cynics have scoffed at for years, decades even."

As he and other Republicans have done for months while promoting the plan, he likewise framed the bill as being beneficial to workers and families.

"This is real relief for families out there living paycheck-to-paycheck, struggling to make ends meet," he later added.

However, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., castigated Republicans for a bill that she said would particularly benefit the already-wealthy.

"In this holy time, the moral obscenity and unrepentant greed of the GOP tax scam stands out even more clearly," she said.

Though the bill would lower tax rates for many Americans, it also is in large part a corporate tax cut, lowering the top federal corporate tax rate drastically, from 35 percent to 21 percent.

According to a new report from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the plan would overwhelmingly benefit the richest Americans. In 2018, the center estimates, the average household would get a tax cut of $1,610, but the average household earning more than $1 million would get a tax cut of nearly $70,000.

However, the bill makes most individual tax changes temporary, setting them to expire after 2025, while making corporate tax cuts permanent. Republicans did this so that the bill could meet budgetary rules they had set out for themselves.

That early sunset of individual tax cuts means that, come 2027, more than half of Americans could see a tax increase, according to the Tax Policy Center report.

Speaking to reporters after the House vote, Ryan said that Republicans intend to eventually extend those provisions.

"We have every intent of making those permanent," he said.

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The bill is also set to add nearly $1.5 trillion to deficits over the next decade.

Republicans, eager to score a major legislative win, have pushed their tax overhaul through Congress at breakneck pace. Thus far, 47 days have passed since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was introduced in the House.

That's quick compared to the last time the tax code underwent major changes, with the Tax Reform Act of 1986. President Ronald Reagan signed that bill 323 days after it was first introduced in the House.

That's not the only way that this tax overhaul effort differs from the Reagan overhaul in 1986. That one had bipartisan agreement, with "yes" votes from 116 Republicans, along with 176 Democrats, as C-SPAN Capitol Hill producer Craig Caplan pointed out Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/943162598027120642

 
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