Brady at White House meeting: House to vote on more tax cuts in September

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Tuesday that he expects the House to vote on a second round of tax cuts in September.

“We anticipate the House voting on this in September and the Senate setting a timetable as well,” Brady said in remarks from the White House, where he and other GOP members of the committee met with President Trump.

A September vote would allow the House to take up the tax package just weeks before the midterm elections.

Republicans hope to use a tax vote to help their members, and many of the Republicans attending the event at the White House face competitive races this fall.

{mosads}Lawmakers who attended the meeting included Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who is running for governor, Rep. Jim Renacci (R-Ohio), who is running for Senate, Rep. Mike Bishop (R-Mich.), who is seeking re-election in a race the Cook Political Report calls a toss-up, and Rep. George Holding (R-N.C.), whose re-election race is rated “likely Republican” by Cook.

The focus of the tax package is expected to be a permanent extension of the tax cuts for individuals that were a part of the tax law Trump signed in December. Brady said that he thinks it’s important to cement the tax cuts so that Democrats can’t reverse the benefits for middle-class taxpayers in the future.

“We can protect them against a future Washington trying to steal back those hard-earned dollars that you and Republicans in Congress has given them,” Brady said to Trump.

While a bill to cement the individual tax cuts is likely to pass the House, it would face challenges in the Senate, where it would need some Democratic support. There also are some Senate Republicans who are reluctant to vote for another tax-cut bill if it would further add to the deficit.

Still, House Republicans see benefits to holding a vote on another tax bill in order to highlight their 2017 tax bill and to put Democrats on the spot. They also think that there are policy benefits to making the individual tax cuts permanent, with Brady saying that doing so would help to create more jobs.

Brady’s comments about the tax cut 2.0 efforts came after Trump spoke about his meeting and press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Brady said that “peace through strength is foreign policy that works, and it works best when America has a strong economy and a strong military.”