Trump Touts Tax Reform, Pressures Democrats in Speech

President Donald Trump kicked off his party’s major push for tax reform with a speech in Springfield, Missouri, Wednesday, pledging to reduce the burden of taxation on America’s companies and workers and calling for Democratic support.

“The foundation of our job creation agenda is to fundamentally reform our tax code for the first time in more than 30 years,” Trump said.

Although Congress has pressing spending issues to tackle when it returns to Washington next week, tax reform promises to be the flavor of the month. Congressional and White House leaders have been in talks to hash out a mutually agreeable plan for months, but it will now fall to the tax-writing committees to turn an assortment of broad tax goals into a feasible piece of legislation. The process will likely mean compromising on a number of the White House’s recommended cuts, including a corporate tax reduction from 35 percent to 15 percent that the president touted on Wednesday. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady has expressed hope that the final plan might get the corporate tax rate down to 20 percent; Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch isn’t even that ambitious.

“In fact, it would be kind of miraculous if we could get it down to 25 percent or less,” the Utah Republican said in late-July.

The GOP controls only 52 Senate seats, and leaders are acutely aware of how difficult it is to pass legislation on a party-line vote after their failure to achieve Obamacare repeal in July. So for tax reform, the White House plans to raise the pressure on blue-state senators up for reelection in 2018.