House Passes Budget Blueprint, Clearing Path for Tax Overhaul<br />WASHINGTON — The Republican race to overhaul the tax code broke into a sprint on Thursday, with House members narrowly clearing a budget blueprint<br />that would allow a tax bill to pass Congress without any Democratic votes, and Senate leaders signaling that the bill could be introduced, debated and approved in both chambers by the end of November.<br />Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the bill was shaping up to be “a bunch of false promises to the<br />middle class.” Republicans, he said, “know the details — the specifics of what they’re really about — will be hard to argue in the sunlight.”<br />Lawmakers and committee staff members must still resolve some of the thorniest issues before they can release a bill, including where to draw income lines for tax brackets, how high to set the top personal income tax rate and how to ensure<br />that major changes to the way that multinational corporations are taxed do not encourage them to shift more money overseas.<br />The budget measure passed over the loud protests of House members from New York and New Jersey, who worry<br />that the blueprint will doom the current deduction for state and local taxes — a benefit of great importance to taxpayers in their states.<br />Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways<br />and Means Committee, said his committee would introduce a bill on Nov. 1 and begin amending it on Nov. 6.<br />House Republicans were “asked to vote for a budget<br />that nobody believes in so that we have the chance to vote for a tax bill that nobody’s read,” Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, complained this week.
