January 25, 2024: What will it take to pass the new bipartisan tax bill?

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

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🗓️ 25 January 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

When it was unveiled, the bipartisan tax deal brokered by Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) seemed like a layup — it expanded the child tax credit (a Dem priority) while offering relief to businesses (a GOP priority). But now, in the cold spotlight of simple congressional vote-counting, it faces a very real challenge: border politics. Can it actually pass? Tax policy reporter Ben Guggenheim walks Playbook co-author Rachael Bade through what has to happen to make it through the Congress.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Presented by Electronic Payments Coalition.
0:07.6	Hey, good morning. I playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Thursday, January 25th.
0:12.5	Some big news last night. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to be having second thoughts about a border deal.
0:18.8	Yes, once upon a time, just a few days ago, McConnell was pretty
0:22.3	blunt in encouraging GOP senators to accept the yet unveiled border deal that James Langford
0:28.0	has been negotiating with Democrats. So much for that. In a private meeting yesterday,
0:32.8	McConnell cast doubt on his conference coalescing behind a border security deal during an election year.
0:38.3	He noted that while the party used to be united in finding a solution for the border, the politics,
0:43.4	he said, quote, have changed. That's because Donald Trump is basically the nominee, he said,
0:48.4	and the former president wants the issue for his 2024 campaign more than an actual solution.
0:56.4	We're in a quandary, McConnell told his members, and this was news first reported by our friends over at Punchbowl. We don't want to do
1:01.0	anything to undermine Trump. The remarks come less than a week after McConnell had basically been
1:06.7	pointing out to his members that for as long as he's been in the Senate, Republicans haven't been
1:12.0	able to get a border security bill just like the one that Langford is currently working on.
1:17.0	He said that even if Republicans have 100% of power, the presidency of the House and the Senate,
1:21.4	they probably wouldn't be able to get a single vote to pass what Senator Langford is working on
1:25.6	right now with the administration.
1:28.2	McConnell's change in tune, to be fair, actually reflects reality.
1:31.8	Trump and conservatives have been going out there, leaning on their GOP colleagues,
1:35.4	not to give Joe Biden a win on an issue that has been crippling him in the polls.
1:40.0	But the development has, of course, far-reaching consequences, not only for the border, which is awash in chaos right now, but also for Ukraine, a country that McConnell has actually championed for a really long time.
1:51.5	You can bet that if there's no border deal, there's not going to be any more Ukraine funding.
	...

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