Hawley separately critiqued the tax provisions rolled out by Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), calling the package a departure from what President Trump called for in a Tuesday morning interview with MAGA strategist Steve Bannon: They want to roll back some of these Trump tax cuts, the populist tax cuts: no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime.
He told reporters in the Capitol that he had spoken with Trump about the Senate proposal, describing the president as surprised by the bills Medicaid language. And Collins, who met with Vance separately this week, said she is still suggesting changes to the bill.
Thune, after the Senates closed-door lunch, acknowledged he is still negotiating with members of his conference, including Hawley and Collins, about components or pieces of the bill that they would like to see modified or changed.
Items that are likely to be the subject of the heaviest lobbying include a tax cut for pass-through businesses that was reduced from the House plan as well as a planned increase in university endowment taxes even though Senate Republicans significantly softened what House Republicans had proposed.
The job of threading the needle has largely fallen to Crapo, the stealthy dealmaker who crafted the Medicaid and tax portion of the legislation and briefed GOP conference members Monday on the policies.
He did what he does best: balanced everybodys concerns and found the sweetest spot he could find, and its not adequate for some people, said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) of how Crapos been fielding concerns from his colleagues.
One major issue is that Crapos draft made some business tax cuts permanent rather than sunsetting them at the end of 2029, as the House did a key priority for himself and his fellow Finance Committee Republicans, but at the expense of some other provisions, including the provider tax.
Every spending reduction that we were able to achieve was helpful in achieving the permanence, Crapo told reporters Tuesday, estimating the Medicaid changes alone generated hundreds of billions of dollars in offsets.
But GOP senators who expected Crapos Medicaid language to largely match the Houses were caught off guard by those changes, and now he and Thune are dealing with potentially time-consuming pushback.
I never thought we could get it done by the Fourth of July, said Murkowski. But you know what? Im not in charge of the schedule.
