Ohio Sen. Brown promises ‘hell of a fight’ with Republicans on taxes

President Donald Trump, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and other Republicans want to simplify the tax code by reducing the number of individual income tax bracket

President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have yet to offer a specific plan to overhaul the income tax code, but Republicans and Democrats are already fighting over it.

During a hearing Thursday of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Sherrod Brown charged that if Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky excludes Democrats from having a say in revising the tax code “he’s going to have one hell of a fight on his hands.”

In particular, Brown, D-Ohio, warned Senate Republicans not to finance a tax bill with savings in federal retirement and health programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“You’ve got to be kidding: their two best ideas to pay for massive tax cuts for Wall Street are to cut Medicare, raise the eligibility age for Social Security to 70 and then steal from the retirement accounts of working, middle class Americans?” Brown told the panel.

Brown’s verbal assault was inspired not by any Republican plan, but an opinion piece last April in the Wall Street Journal by Martin Feldstein, a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

Feldstein wrote “there is no way to shrink the deficit other than by slowing the growth of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”

In addition, Brown was referring to a Politico.com story from last month in which some officials suggested taxing contributions people make to their 401 K retirement plans.

But there is no sign that Republicans plan to rely on savings from federal retirement and health plans or 401 K plans to pay for revising the tax code.

A Brown aide acknowledged after the hearing that the senator’s comments were “pre-emptive. Sherrod is laying down a marker that these plans will not be acceptable in tax reform.”

President Donald Trump, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and other Republicans want to simplify the tax code by reducing the number of individual income tax brackets from the current six to as few as three while reducing the corporate income tax. But any tax cut will increase the federal deficit, which means lawmakers will have to find savings in the federal budget.

In an interview Thursday on Bloomberg TV, Portman described the tax code as “broken” and “inefficient,” adding that “all the analysis I have seen of the kind of tax reform we are talking about will create more jobs, more demand for labor, and therefore higher wages.”

The White House and Republicans are not expected to offer any details of revising the tax code until later this month.

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