Paul Ryan's moment: Tax talk is over, and tax legislating begins

The takeoff may have been rocky, but the Republican tax reform is off the ground.Nine months into President Trump’s tenure, House Republicans have finally introduced legislation to try to put tax reform on his desk. Now, they aim to ram it through Congress in just two months, a near-impossible task that could define the legacies of House Speaker Paul Ryan, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, and perhaps Trump himself.

In the days and then hours before finalizing the bill, House Republicans negotiated among themselves, rewrote the bill, bargained among themselves, and rewrote it again. In considering last-minute changes to taxes that will reshape entire sectors of the economy, House Republicans provided a preview of the hard choices, horse-trading, bargaining, and sacrifices that the party will have to make in advancing the bill through the House and Senate in a form that Trump will sign.

Brady was forced to delay the bill’s unveiling to incorporate last-minute changes to maintain support from rank-and-file members of the conference. In particular, the tax writers had to scramble to put together a compromise on the planned elimination of the state and local tax deduction to appease lawmakers from high-tax states worried that their constituents’ tax bills could rise.

Members of the committee were holed up in the Capitol until late on Wednesday night ahead of the Thursday morning release, going through the bill section by section to make the numbers add up as Brady’s hometown Houston Astros advanced toward a World Series championship. They only finished around the 8th inning, near 11 p.m.

Yet they finished, and produced a 400-page bill Thursday morning that would accomplish some of the top goals shared by Trump, Ryan, and almost all Republicans.