A U.S. Senate Republican tax bill strongly backed by President Donald Trump faced potential opposition on Monday from two Republican lawmakers who could prevent the sweeping legislation from reaching the Senate floor.
Senators Ron Johnson and Bob Corker, both members of the Senate Budget Committee, said they could vote against the tax package at a Tuesday hearing that Republican leaders hoped would send the legislation to a full Senate vote as early as Thursday. Each senator is seeking different changes to the legislation.
Their opposition could create the first major hurdle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where political infighting killed the party’s effort to overturn the Obamacare healthcare law earlier this year.
Corker, a prominent deficit hawk, said he wants his fellow Republicans to add a backstop measure to prevent tax cuts from ballooning the deficit. Johnson said he wants a bigger tax break for “pass-through” businesses, which include small mom-and-pop enterprises as well as some large, non-corporate businesses.
”If we develop a fix prior to committee, I’ll probably support it, but if we don‘t, I’ll vote against it,” Johnson’s office quoted him telling reporters in his home state of Wisconsin.
Republicans have only a one-vote majority on the 23-member budget committee.
Republicans see the tax bill as their last chance to score a significant legislative achievement in 2017 and save face with voters in next year’s congressional midterm elections. Since Trump took office in January, he and his fellow Republicans have passed no major legislation, despite controlling both chambers of Congress and the White House.
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