The full House passed Thursday the GOP tax reform plan by a 227-205 vote, which House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, hailed as “a historic moment for the American people.”
The Senate Finance Committee was still marking up its version of tax reform at press time Thursday afternoon.
Thirteen Republicans voted against the House tax plan. After the House vote, Democratic lawmakers chided passage of the bill, calling it the “GOP Tax Scam.”
Brady said that while passage of the GOP tax bill the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is a step forward allowing Americans to “keep more of what you earn, start that new business, find that next job, and get that long-overdue raise,” passage of the bill “is not the last step. We will continue to strengthen this legislation and, working with the Senate, we will put tax reform on the president’s desk by the end of the year for the first time in 31 years.”
Political analyst Andy Friedman of The Washington Update, who’s a former tax attorney, told ThinkAdvisor on Thursday that he sees the Senate “managing to pass something — maybe not the exact bill the Senate Finance Committee is considering now — sometime after Thanksgiving, and that the houses thereafter will successfully resolve their bill differences.”