Republicans race the clock to finish tax reform before Christmas

Wednesday's Senate vote to negotiate a tax bill with the House started the clock on an ambitious plan by Republicans to finalize a sweeping tax overhaul in just a matter of weeks, in the hopes of putting the once-in-a-generation bill on President Trump's desk by Christmas.

Even before the Senate vote, Republican leaders were talking behind the scenes to mull some of the major revisions needed to bring the bills into alignment. Some of the biggest changes to the Senate bill were added just before it passed to expedite the process.

“Before Christmas,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Wednesday, when asked by radio host Hugh Hewitt about timing for final passage. “We’ll have to have a conference with the House yet ahead of us and work out the differences, but the core of the two bills are really very similar. And I think we’ll be able to do that in fairly short order."

Although the version of the bill passed by the Senate created new problems to fix, Republicans projected optimism that the obstacles were not a threat to final passage.

The broadest issues to be addressed are whether the conference committee can maintain all the promises made to members to gain their votes without giving up on the 20 percent corporate tax rate and how to fix the Senate’s last-minute decisions to retain the individual and corporate alternative minimum taxes.