Graham: Ryan tax plan won’t get 10 votes in the Senate

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says the House GOP tax plan that Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) tried to sell to Senate Republicans won’t get 10 votes in the upper chamber. 

If Graham is correct, it’ll be a blow for Ryan and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas), who are pushing a 20 percent across-the-board tax increase on imports to pay for comprehensive tax reform.

The idea has run into staunch resistance in the Senate, which bodes ill for President Trump’s hopes of passing tax reform this year. 

{mosads}“The Congress is stumbling. Republicans in the Congress — we’re all tied up in knots,” Graham told CBS’s “Face the Nation” in an interview Sunday. “The House is talking about a tax plan that won’t get 10 votes in the Senate.”

Ryan told Senate Republicans to “keep your powder dry” and not criticize the House tax proposal until they learn more about it, according to a GOP senator who met with Ryan at lunch Tuesday.

Ryan argued that the $1.2 trillion in projected revenues raised by the border adjustment tax would be used to keep the broader tax reform package deficit-neutral, something he said would be essential to getting it passed through both chambers.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), the former CEO of Dollar General and Reebok, has led opposition to the proposal, which he described in a recent letter to colleagues as “regressive” and a plan that “hammers consumers.”

Republicans from agriculture-dependent states are worried about retaliatory tariffs if the United States raises taxes on imports. 

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) said a border adjustment tax will hit farmers hard.

“If you were to go to a farmer and say what does a border adjustment tax mean to you, they might try to sell the farm right then,” he said.