It appears that the GOP’s most precious constituency has laid down the law to its minions:
A Republican senator who’s helping to negotiate a bipartisan infrastructure proposal said Sunday that the group is no longer looking at toughening enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service as a way to pay for the massive bill.
“Well, one reason it’s not part of the proposal is that we did have pushback. Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a proposal into the reconciliation package, which was not just similar to the one we had, but with a lot more IRS enforcement,” Sen. Rob Portman told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” when asked about Republican opposition to the idea.
“That created quite a problem because the general agreement is that this is the bipartisan-negotiated infrastructure package and that we will stick with that,” added Portman, a lead Republican negotiator in the group who said he has been working with the White House on the legislation.
The comments from the Ohio Republican mean that the group of lawmakers will have to continue looking for ways to pay for the costly infrastructure package, the latest version of which suggested that an additional $100 billion could be collected by the IRS over the next 10 years simply by beefing up enforcement and making sure the government is collecting what taxpayers actually owe — also known as closing the “tax gap.”
A Democratic aide confirmed to CNN on Sunday that Republicans and Democrats in the bipartisan group have agreed to scrap the enhanced IRS enforcement provision after conservatives pushed back it, endangering the group’s ability to get a deal ahead of a procedural vote scheduled for Wednesday to advance the legislation.
Yeah, I don’t believe this idea that they “heard” the Democrats were going to put in an IRS provision in their reconciliation bill defied the bipartisan agreement. The Democrats obviously agreed to take out the provision so the Republicans didn’t have to deal with they angry benefactors. It’s possible some of them were feeling heat too, of course, but presumably they will have to put this into their reconciliation bill anyway in order to give the nervous centrists the excuse that this is all “paid for.”
I don’t know if this means the topline number of the bipartisan deal will have to come down or if they’ll find some other form of revenue. And, needless to say, the reconciliation deal is hardly solid. Emperor Manchin will have something to say about that. And he probably got an earful at his fundraisers with Texas oil and gas millionaires this weekend. But we’ll just have to continue to watch this negotiation unfold. Anything can happen.