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FIRST ON FOX: Former Vice President Mike Pence’s conservative organization wants Republican senators to gut provisions from the “big, beautiful bill” that could jeopardize the legislation’s survival in both chambers.
Advancing American Freedom wants to see key provisions that helped move President Donald Trump’s bill through the House stripped out, according to a letter from Chair Marc Short and President Tim Chapman sent to Republican senators on Thursday, first obtained by Fox News Digital.
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The duo praised House Republicans for “hard-fought” reforms to Medicaid, rolling back of certain provisions from the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, cuts to Planned Parenthood funding and the end of taxpayer dollars flowing to “dangerous sex change operations.”
But they believed the Senate GOP could further refine the House’s offering.
“Even still, the Senate should build on the House’s hard work to perfect the One, Big, Beautiful Bill to deliver for the American people,” they wrote.
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Pence’s organization also called for further lowering the corporate tax rate, which was set at 21% by Trump’s first-term tax cut package, eliminating the state and local tax (SALT) deduction entirely, ending all Green New Deal subsidies, and gutting a proposed increase to the debt limit.
Some of the changes advocated for by Advancing American Freedom, like nixing the debt-limit language, could go a long way toward earning support from Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has vowed to vote against the bill if the debt-limit hike is left in.
But completely ending green subsidies could pose a problem for a cohort of Senate Republicans who have wanted to see the phase-out authored by House Republicans reworked. Doing away with the SALT deduction could hinder the bill, too.
Senate Republicans largely do not care about the increase to the SALT cap to $40,000 pushed for by blue-state Republicans in the House, given that no Republican senator represents a blue state. But House Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California have vowed to vote against the legislation if the cap is touched.
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Congressional Republicans are using the budget reconciliation process to pass a sweeping bill advancing Trump’s agenda on taxes, immigration, energy, defense and the national debt. The main thrust of the colossal package is to extend or make permanent the president’s 2017 tax cuts, but lawmakers are also working to use it to bring down the national debt – nearing $37 trillion – with the aim of cutting $1.5 trillion in federal spending.
While leaders have warned to make as few changes as possible to the House’s offering, the Senate GOP intends to leave its mark on the package, particularly in trying to find steeper savings. Any seismic changes could jeopardize the bill’s survival in the House, where it narrowly passed on a 215 to 214 vote last month.
Short and Chapman noted that the ultimate goal of the package is to prevent Trump’s tax cuts from lapsing.
“If Congress gets cold feet — or fails to send the package to the president’s desk —
American households will suffer a $2,100 tax increase on average,” they wrote.
“[The One Big Beautiful Bill] not only defuses the looming tax bomb, it takes a first step toward entitlement reform, rebuilds the military, and ensures that our Border Patrol agents and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have the tools they need to secure the border and deport illegal aliens,” they said.
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