WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders will sit on the congressional committee responsible for reconciling the differences between the House and Senate versions of the tax bill.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Thursday that he selected the Vermont independent to be one of seven Senate Democrats on the tax bill conference committee.
Sanders, the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, vowed to continue his opposition to the Republican-led tax overhaul package.
“Let me be very clear: Both versions of the Senate and the House tax bills are morally grotesque and terrible economic policy,” Sanders said.
Congressional Republicans hope to complete work on the legislation by the end of the year.
Proponents of the bill say it will decrease the tax burden on most Americans and spur economic growth.
However, Sanders and other Democrats argue that tax breaks are predominantly targeted at the wealthiest individuals and corporations.
Sanders also said the package will increase the federal deficit by more than $1 trillion — which analyses of the bill, including one by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, have verified. Supporters of the bill have argued that the tax cuts will pay for themselves over time.
Sanders has argued that Republicans will seek to cut programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as a result of the fiscal pressures created by the tax plan.
“As a member of the conference committee, I will do everything I can to defeat these bills,” he said. “We need to rebuild the disappearing middle class, not provide more tax breaks to billionaires.”
Lawmakers on the 29-member conference committee will meet next week to begin the work of reconciling the differences between the two pieces of legislation.
In order for the legislation to proceed, the panel will need to pass the bill on a majority vote. Then it must win approval by the full House and the full Senate before going to the president’s desk for a signature.
Both the House and Senate packages reduce the top corporate income tax rate from the current 35 percent to 20 percent. They also both roughly double the standard deduction for individuals.
Both bills increase the threshold of the exemption for the estate tax, but only the House version includes a plan to repeal the estate tax as of 2023.
One major difference has to do with how the pieces of legislation propose to pay for the tax cut.
The Senate bill would repeal a key part of the Affordable Care Act that imposes a tax penalty on people who do not have health insurance, a provision not included in the House bill.
The two bills also handle tax rates for small businesses differently. The Senate increased the child tax credit more than the House bill did.
Meanwhile, the House bill makes changes to many deductions and exemptions under current law, which the Senate bill does not touch — such as for medical expenses, student loan interest, tuition waivers often used by graduate students and more.
People involved with affordable housing initiatives, higher education, local development projects, and other sectors in Vermont have raised concerns about what the proposed changes in the federal tax code would mean for them.
Vermont officials said this week that they expect most Vermonters would see their income tax rates decrease under the plan in the short term.
However, Gov. Phil Scott expressed concern about some aspects of the package, including elimination of economic development tax credits, the rushed process used to pass the bill so far through Congress, and the impact the reform package will have on the national deficit.
