White House: Trump will likely sign tax bill Friday

President Trump will likely sign the Republican tax overhaul on Friday, according to a White House official.

“There’s a very good chance the president signs it tomorrow,” said the official.

The measure was the most extensive rewrite of the tax code in at least a generation and its passage Wednesday marked the first major legislative achievement for Trump and the GOP.

But the question of when Trump would sign the bill into law had remained unanswered.{mosads}

White House officials said the president might wait until the new year if Congress did not approve a provision waiving automatic spending cuts as part of a government funding bill to prevent a shutdown.

But a waiver of the pay-as-you-go budgetary rules was included in the funding bill, which lawmakers are expected to send to the president’s desk late Thursday or early Friday.

Under the law, automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs would have been triggered in January because the tax bill is projected to increase the budget deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years. 

Waiting until early 2018 to sign the tax bill would have staved off the cuts until 2019.