POLITICAL FIGURES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump renewed his attacks on Senator Bob Corker on Tuesday [10-24-17], chastising him for his skepticism over a $1.5 trillion tax cut. Mr. Corker responded by going on national television to say that Mr. Trump was ‘debasing’ the United States and that the president struggled with the truth…
The extraordinary back and forth between a Republican president and the Republican chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee came just hours after Mr. Trump is to join Senate Republicans for their weekly lunch in the Capitol. That lunch is expected to be dominated by a discussion of the ambitious tax package set to be released as soon as next week.
Republicans are attempting to craft a tax bill that can pass the Senate by a party-line vote, avoiding a Democratic filibuster.
To do that, they must contain the revenue losses from reducing tax rates, both over the next decade and in the years to follow.
The party’s most difficult fights will be over how to do that — by some combination of eliminating popular tax breaks and employing accounting maneuvers, such as setting some tax cuts to expire, in order to reduce revenue losses.”
-Eileen Sullivan, “Trump and Corker Escalate Battle Over Taxes, in Personal Terms,” The New York Times online, Oct. 24, 2017