Joseph Lawler and David Drucker of the Washington Examiner offer an update on the controversial proposal for a federal border-adjustment tax.
On June 9, appearing at the Heritage Foundation think tank, [U.S. Rep. David] Brat and his Freedom Caucus colleagues delivered a blunt message that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. should drop the border adjustment tax.
“It’s dead,” said Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus, in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “The question is, are we going to realize it’s dead now, or are we going to fail at the first effort at tax reform two months from now when it’s still in there and the votes start to hemorrhage?”
The evolution of Brat and others reflects a coordinated, multimillion-dollar lobbying by the retail industry and conservative advocacy groups. Success came faster than opponents of border adjustment had imagined possible.
It has brought the linchpin of Ryan’s master tax reform plan to the brink of defeat as House and Senate leaders, and President Trump’s White House negotiators, work to write legislation they can agree on.
Ryan doesn’t accept that border adjustment is dead. But he did concede in an interview that his proposal is in trouble, on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
