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Top GOP senators say they have the votes to pass tax bill

by Jordain Carney - 12/01/17 10:34 AM ET

Republicans have clinched the 50 votes need to pass their tax plan, after three key holdouts came on board.

The move puts the legislation on a path to clear the upper chamber as soon as Friday and puts Senate Republicans on the brink of a significant legislative and political victory.

Senate GOP leadership has been under a mountain of pressure to deliver on the tax bill after failing to repeal and replace ObamaCare in July and again in September.

{mosads}Top Republican senators appeared confident on Friday that they had the votes, after GOP Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said they would support the plan.

“I believe so,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), asked if they had the votes needed to pass the legislation.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), surrounded by a mob of reporters, smiled as he declared that he would be able to make good on the key GOP agenda item.

“We have the votes,” he told reporters, after a closed-door caucus meeting.

With a 52-seat majority McConnell can only lose two GOP senators and still let Vice President Pence break a tie.

Leadership and staffers have been locked for days in a frenzy of around-the-clock negotiations as they tried to tamp down last minute concerns from deficit hawks that threatened to derail the bill.

GOP Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.) on Thursday initially held out from helping vote down a Democratic effort to send the tax plan back to the Senate Finance Committee.

But in a turnaround, Flake gave Republicans their 50th “yes” vote on Friday, saying he had been able to get rid of a “budget gimmick” and had gotten a commitment from leadership win permanent protections for young immigrants who had been allowed to work in the United States under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

“I am pleased to announce I will vote in support the tax reform bill,” he said.

Corker and GOP Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) have yet to say how they will vote on the tax legislation.

But GOP leadership appears ready to pass the legislation without Corker, who has been pushing to get a guarantee that the bill won’t increase the deficit.

Corker wanted a “trigger” for automatic tax hikes in the bill if government revenue projections aren’t met, but he was told by the parliamentarian that the provision doesn’t comply with Senate rules.

Instead, leadership offered to add automatic tax increases in the bill, but that idea faced a swift backlash from other members of the caucus, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“Everybody wants to keep fooling with this tax bill just quit fooling around,” Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) told reporters on Thursday night.

Republicans announced after their closed-door caucus meeting on Friday that they would not include the automatic tax increases in the bill.

“I don’t think there are going to be any automatic tax increase,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

An analysis released by the Joint Committee on Taxation on Thursday found that the bill would cost $1 trillion over a decade, though senators could get an updated score Friday.

Johnson and Daines had also been pushing for a better deduction rate for small-and-mid size business known as “pass throughs.”

Johnson said on Friday that he had been able to secure a better deal on the deduction percent for “pass-through” businesses, raising it from 17.4 percent to 23 percent.

“A seat at the table. Not just input. Not just consulting, but a seat at the table,” he added, asked how he was able to get to “yes” on the legislation.

This story was updated at 1:40 p.m.