Reconciliation bill: Manchin slams IRS reporting proposal, Hoyer says deal is near: LIVE UPDATES
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa., trashed Democrats proposal to have the banks report the inflows and outflows of many accounts to the IRS Tuesday morning.
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Senate Democrats are providing more details on their plan to implement a 15% minimum tax on corporate profits. During a meeting with reporters, Sen. Angus King said the plan would generate $300 billion to $400 billion over 10 years.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said all 50 Senate Democrats would support the proposal, meaning that moderate Sen. Joe Manchin is in favor. Additionally, Sen. Ron Wyden said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen confirmed the proposal aligns with the global minimum tax on corporations, per Fox News' Jason Donner.
Introduced by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Angus King and Ron Wyden, the measure would apply to roughly 200 companies that report more than $1 billion in annual profits, according to a fact sheet released by the lawmakers.
“This proposal represents a commonsense step toward ensuring that highly profitable corporations — which sometimes can avoid the current corporate tax rate — pay a reasonable minimum corporate tax on their profits, just as everyday Arizonans and Arizona small businesses do,” Sinema said. “I look forward to continuing discussions with the White House and colleagues to expand economic opportunities, retain America’s economic competitiveness, and help Arizona families get ahead.”
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Angus King, and Ron Wyden announced the proposal, whcih is cosponsored by Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). The lawmakers said the proposal "prevents America’s largest corporations from paying nothing in federal taxes" and would help to offset the cost of President Biden's spending bill.
The measure would apply to roughly 200 companies with more than $1 billion in profits and create a 15% minimum tax on their profits. The lawmakers said the proposal would raise hundreds of billions in revenue over 10 years.
When asked if she felt a framework agreement on President Biden's social spending bill would be enough to allow a House vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "I think it is."
House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal has called for the Senate to pass the social spending bill before the House votes on the bipartisan bill, which is focused on physical projects.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer asserted any spending bill agreement would include strong provisions aimed at reaching President Biden's goal of cutting carbon emissions. However, he provided few specifics, and moderate Sen. Joe Manchin is said to oppose wide swaths of Biden's climate agenda.
"There's going to be a very strong, robust climate package. And our goal is to meet the president's goal. There are different ways to get there, of 80 percent of electricity being clean and 50 percent reduction of carbon into the atmosphere," Schumer said.
Schumer added that Democrats were "moving towards finding sweet spots" on areas that remain in dispute.
Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden told reporters he will release the details for both the corporate minimum tax proposal and the billionaire unrealized gains tax proposal tonight, per FOX Business Network's Hillary Vaughn.
Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., would not explicitly say that he would vote against Democrats' reconciliation bill if it does not include Medicaid expansion Tuesday, but he made clear it is a key demand for him and his fellow Georgia Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock.
"No senator's vote should be taken for granted," Ossoff said when asked whether he would withhold his vote on the bill if Medicaid expansion is not included.
"We're going to look at the total," bill, Warnock said in response to a similar question.
"But we have been consistently clear," Warnock continued, that Medicaid expansion is a key issue.
The two senators ran on the issue of Medicaid expansion in their 2020 Senate races, and Warnock specifically is up for reelection in 2022 because he was in a special election.
"We’re fighting for this," Ossoff said. "Hundreds of thousands of our constituents in Georgia suffer from lack of health care."
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., specifically has been opposed to the Medicaid expansion that Warnock and Ossoff are pushing, which would create a program that's just like Medicaid for states that refused to take advantage of expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In the ACA, states pay 10% of Medicaid costs, whereas in the program currently under consideration, beneficiary states would pay nothing. This, Manchin says, is unfair because it would reward states that held out on expanding Medicaid under the ACA.
"The people of Georgia are paying taxes for health care they cannot access while subsidizing health care in West Virginia," Warnock retorted Tuesday, noting that West Virginia has expanded Medicaid while Georgia has not.
Medicaid is just one of many issues Democrats are trying to come to an agreement on this week.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.J., said Tuesday that Democrats still need to "close the tax gap" somehow in their reconciliation bill just minutes after Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said the IRS bank reporting requirement they hoped to do that with won't be in the final bill.
"North of 95% of everyday Americans, who are salaried employees, who work nine to five jobs, pay their taxes because of deductions that are taken out on a weekly basis," Jeffries said in response to a question from Fox News. "We do need to close the tax gap… That tax avoidance [by the rich] is largely taking place by the wealthiest amongst us who've got super lawyers and accountants, and are engaged in a regular practice of trying to avoid paying taxes that they lawfully owe."
Jeffries added: "Figuring out where the common ground is in the House and the Senate is an important part of the process."
Manchin earlier in the day at an event for The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., said that he met with President Biden and told him about his serious qualms regarding the reporting requirement.
"I said, ‘Do you understand how messed up that is to think that Uncle Sam is going to be watching?’" Manchin said. "I said, Mr. President, I don't know what happened. This cannot happen. This is screwed up."
Manchin said Biden agreed with him, "So I think this one's gonna be" out of the bill.
Democrats in favor of the requirement have noted that it will not capture individual transactions, just aggregate inflows and outflows of bank accounts. And after backlash to a $600 threshold that would have captured nearly all bank accounts, Democrats came up with an alternative proposal this month.
The new proposal would only apply to people who get $10,000 in deposits to their bank accounts that are not wages per year, or who spend at least $10,000 more than their wages per year.
But that proposal has not been laid out in the form of legislative text yet. And with Manchin's objection it's now unclear if it ever will.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., attacked Democrats Tuesday over the demands by many in their party to repeal the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions.
"Then there's the Democrats' obsession with the so-called SALT cap. Even as our colleagues draft the biggest tax hikes in half a century, they cannot resist the concept of special tax cuts for high earners in blue states," McConnell said on the Senate floor.
"They want to reintroduce a federal tax subsidy for living in high-tax states," he added.
Republicans imposed the SALT cap during the Trump presidency, and many Democrats said that it was a targeted effort to punish those living in blue states. Some moderate Democrats, particularly Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., say they will not vote for the reconciliation bill without some change to the SALT cap.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Tuesday that Democrats may come to an agreement on their budget reconciliation bill within hours, Fox News' Caroline McKee reports.
"There's a lot of work that's been done. I think it could come together relatively quickly in the next few hours," Hoyer said.
How they will do that is unclear given the many remaining disagreements among Democrats on several elements of their potential bill. But Democrats are rushing to get something done before President Biden leaves the country for a climate summit on Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on Tuesday that Democrats are confident they can come to a deal on their reconciliation bill soon.
"We remain confident that a final deal is within reach," the majority leader said. "The progress of last week illustrated how if we stick together, work toward finding that legislative sweet spot, then we can succeed."
Schumer said Democrats have "a few hard days" ahead of them but that their bill is "so important."
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Tuesday that he does not believe the proposed IRS bank account reporting system will be in the final reconciliation bill after his meeting with President Biden Sunday.
"I said, 'Do you understand how messed up that is to think that Uncle Sam's going to be watching," Manchin said of his meeting with the president this weekend. "I told him... this cannot happen this is screwed up."
Manchin made the comments at an event for The Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
Manchin described bewildered staffers who were, "all looking at each other back and forth, 'Who in the hell did this one?'"
Manchin said the president said, "I think Joe's right on that."
"So I think this one's gonna be gone," Manchin said.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Tuesday that he's approached about changing his party "every day," in the wake of a Mother Jones report last week he was considering doing just that.
Manchin shot down the rumor, but made clear that he doesn't see himself as in the mainstream of the Democratic Party at a Economic Club of Washington, D.C., event Tuesday.
"Oh, it would be much easier. My goodness," Manchin said when asked if it would be easier to leave the Democratic Party. But, the senator continued, "Is that the purpose of being involved in public service?"
Manchin added: "You think that having a D, or an I or an R is going to change who I am? I don't think the R's would be any more happier with me than the D's right now."
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Thursday that he's met repeatedly with top progressives negotiating Democrats' reconciliation bill, specifically Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash.
"The president I think he made a comment a couple weeks ago, they said, 'What do you think about Joe and Bernie getting in the same room?' He said, 'I think it would be homicide,'" Manchin said at an event for the Economic Club of Washington, D.C.
"Sunday I said, 'Mr. President I took your advice, Bernie and I have met the last three days for at least an hour a day getting to know each other differently than we ever did before.' And we have the respect -- I hope I have his respect, he has my respect. I know who he is and where he's coming from. I just respectfully disagree with the approach," Manchin said.
He added on Jayapal: "I never knew her and she didn't know me. I explained, 'Pramila, you represent Silicon Valley. I represent an energy state that people struggle and have always struggled. So we have two different points of view. So we've got to make sure whatever we do takes care of everybody.'"
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Tuesday that he "had a nice visit" with President Biden this weekend but that he told the president government should not be taking care of all people.
"Had a nice visit, I really did. Had a nice visit," Manchin said at an event for The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. "I just basically said to the president, I said Mr. President, my philosophy of politics is this... Government should be my partner not my provider. And I meant that literally and figuratively."
Manchin aired his concerns about spending trillions of dollars as some progressives want to do, including the unknown trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic and the inflation that "now we're finding out it might not be transitory."
Nevertheless, Manchin said, "When I left I think it was a very positive meeting. We know there's a lot of things we can do to make a more perfect union."
Moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia indicated Monday that he would support tax proposals targeting billionaires amid ongoing negotiations within the party toward an agreement on President Biden’s sweeping social spending bill.
"I'm open to any type of thing that makes people pay that's not paying now, so people that don't report income like you and I do, earned income," Manchin told reporters. "There has to be a way for them to pay their fair share."
Manchin told reporters he hasn’t budged from his call for a bill no larger than $1.5 trillion, while progressive support a larger package of as much as $2.2 trillion.
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Senate Democrats are crafting a plan to tax billionaires and other ultra-high earners in order to pay for the bulk of President Biden's signature economic spending plan after failing to secure enough support for a slew of other planned tax increases.
Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is slated to unveil a tax on the unrealized capital gains of the ultra-wealthy this week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said during an interview on CNN. The proposal, which has support from other Democrats, would set the so-called billionaires' income tax at $1 billion income, or three consecutive years of $100 million or more in income.
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