Senator: No hope for GOP tax plan

Senator: No hope for GOP tax plan

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

House Republicans haven’t even officially unveiled their massive plan to overhaul the tax code, and the top Republican in the Senate already is pronouncing it dead.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday he sees no hope for enacting tax-overhaul legislation this year. He blamed Democrats for trying to use the issue to raise revenue by $1 trillion. McConnell said the object of overhauling the tax code should be making the nation more competitive, not raising more money for the government.

McConnell’s remarks came a day before the Republican chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan, was to unveil a massive tax plan three years in the making.

Camp’s plan would cut income-tax rates but impose a new surtax on some high-income families, said a GOP aide who wasn’t authorized to discuss the plan by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. The top income-tax rate for most families would be lowered from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. However, the plan would impose a new 10 percent surtax on some earned income above about $450,000.

The surtax would not apply to capital gains or dividends, sparing many of the super-rich who make most of their money from investments.

The plan had little chance of becoming law this year even before McConnell’s remarks. But it could become a political document for House Republicans to show what they stand for, and for Democrats to attack, as midterm elections approach in November.