White House, McConnell omit promised tax cut from recap of lame-duck agenda
by Steven Nelson
| November 15, 2018 06:23 PM
President Trump told Senate Republican leaders on Thursday that his top lame-duck priorities include passing a spending bill with border security funds and approving new prison reform legislation — but middle-class tax cuts appear to have fallen from the agenda.
Trump vigorously invoked the tax-slashing plan in the final days of the midterm election campaign, but public accounts of an Oval Office agenda meeting do not mention the vow.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., both omitted Trump's "pure 10 percent tax cut" for the middle class from public descriptions of the lame-duck agenda.
Gidley did mention, however, that Trump urged visiting senators to approve more routine legislation, including the farm bill and disaster relief funds.
The lame-duck session ending in January offers Trump his best opportunity to pass substantive policy measures before Democrats take control of the House of Representatives.
On the campaign trail, Trump said tax cuts were on the near-term legislative agenda, confirming repeatedly that he was not making an unserious base-rallying pledge.
"It's going to be put in next week, 10 percent tax cut. [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman] Kevin Brady is working on it. We have been working on it for a few months. That is in addition to the big tax cuts you have already gotten," Trump said at a late-October rally in Texas.
McConnell, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., participated in the Oval Office discussion on Thursday.
"We had a good discussion about funding the government and the other sort of year-end items," McConnell told reporters afterward.
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