Senate Passes Tax Reform Early This Morning

After hours of discussion on the Senate floor, early Saturday morning the United States Senate secured the 50 votes needed to pass its tax bill. The vote was a close 51-49.

Earlier this week, the Tax reform bill passed a major procedural hurdle on Tuesday afternoon, when the Senate Budget Committee approved the bill for a full floor vote.

What followed were several days of intense vote-wrangling by Republicans, who scrambled to ensure they had the votes to get the bill past a full floor vote.

Around midday on Friday, Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) announced that “we have the votes,” setting the field for the vote later that day. This followed heated negotiations to try and sway several holdouts, including Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), Steve Daines (R-Montana), and Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin).

Several changes added to the bill as it raced toward the finish line. As reported by Axios, they include "keeping the alternative minimum tax for corporations, increasing the pass-through deduction, allowing up to $10,000 in property tax deductions and increasing repatriation rates compared to an earlier version of the bill."

In addition, the Senate bill has more individual tax brackets at seven compared to the House’s four. The Senate bill merely seeks to change the estate tax, as opposed to the House bill that proposes to eliminate it entirely by 2024.

The House will now vote on Monday at 6 p.m. EST about going to conference with the Senate.