House leaders want tax reform to be permanent, while Trump is flexible

While Republicans projected unity Wednesday as the Trump administration announced its tax reform plan, the White House and House Republican leadership issued differing assessments of the desirability of settling for a temporary tax cut, rather than a comprehensive revision of the tax code.

Trump administration officials indicated that temporary tax cut was an acceptable outcome, while House Republican leadership staked out opposition.

"The goal is to make it permanent but, you know, there's lot of levers here," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday morning. "And, you know, if we have them 10 years, that's better than nothing, but we'd like to have permanency to it."

While views among Republicans differ and some say that they would be willing to accept a scenario in which Trump signed legislation that provided only temporary tax cuts, the lawmakers most responsible for taxes in the House resist the idea.

"It would be a mistake at this juncture to step back and not recognize the inflection point we are at not recognize the momentum on tax reform we have right now, and to say, we ought to give this everything we've got trying to make it permanent," said Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, speaking at a conference hosted Wednesday by the law firm BakerHostetler. Roskam is chairman of the tax subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee.