Good Thursday morning, I'm Jake Sherman and welcome to your political playbook audio briefing, sponsored by the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

And I'm Anna Palmer. Here's the December timeline we're all watching closely. On Friday, Republicans are scheduled to release their tax bill.

On Monday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on the legislation. Tuesday, the House has planned to take up the bill,

and the remainder of that week is all about government funding, which expires Friday, December 22nd.

There is now a chance the House will move first on the tax bill, according to multiple sources

involved in the talks. The Senate was supposed to vote Monday, followed by the House, as we just said.

But now there's a thought that the House goes first so they can push through a government

funding bill while the Senate wrestles with the tax bill. There are plenty of problems facing

Republicans. First absences John McCain is in the hospital. Thad Cochran hasn't voted in the last

several days. There continues to be big government funding misgivings.

House Republicans had a tense internal meeting yesterday afternoon in which they laid out their

plan to fund the Pentagon for the year while keeping the government on a short-term spending

plan that runs to January. House Republicans are facing pressure to pass that bill and leave

town, an attempt to try to force the Senate to swallow it. But the Senate cannot pass this package, and if the House leaves town, the government could shut down.

The Washington Post is reporting that Senator John McCain has been admitted to Walter Reed for recovery from side effects of another round of treatment for his brain cancer.

McCain missed his third straight day of Senate votes Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Republicans look like they are making real progress on their tax bill. The Wall Street

Journal reports that the highest earning Americans will get a lower tax rate and corporations

will pay slightly more than in previous bills. The deal would set the top rate at 37% the journal is reporting,

lower than today's 39.6%, and lower than the top rate each of the House and Senate bills

had previously included. The fallout from Alabama continues. Ileana Johnson and Alex Eisenstadt

report on the civil war between Steve Bannon and Mitch McConnell erupting anew with both sides laying blame of the loss in Alabama on each other. The New York

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