massive tax cut. that s a hard sell. look, i mean, it s not a large sell when you look at the promise that the president and the republican party made to the voters last november. they said they re going to bring tax reform. they said they were going to do infrastructure and they said obamacare repeal. we re combining those two. it s risky but a risk they have to take at this point. you re right. they did have a very energized democratic base and republican energized base didn t appear. that s because they felt the republicans in the house and in congress weren t working in concert with the president to achieve some of the priorities they voted for. you had moderate republicans, kiersten, murkowski among them, right, who couldn t get on board with these, the repeal of obamacare. they re now stuck. they have to make a choice. get rid of the individual mandate and save the money so they can get their tax cut through or say no, we can t do this. but will practicality win and they vote
markups are moving along right now with a rollback of obamacare s individual mandate shoe horned into the senate version of the bill. phil mattingly is on capitol hill for us. phil, the house is not including this repeal of the obamacare individual mandate in their bill. we re already hearing there is some republican opposition to the senate tax reform bill into yeah, jake, believe it or not, it s not related to the individual mandate. senator ron johnson, a republican, who has made really clear the passthrough rate with s corporates pay on the individual side has been his primary issue. he said what the senate and house bills do is not enough. he says he s a no. whether it s the individual mandate, various rates or individual cuts altogether. there is no shortage of issues even has the house prepares to pass their first bill. reporter: tonight, house republicans are just 24 hours away from a major legislative victory, the passage of the gop tax plan. we have more even today. we ha
workers, middle income workers and their wages. i think the status quo has been a failure for the american people. look what s happened in the last 30 years with the redistribution of wealth to the 1%. what we re bringing is a tax code that impacts and has a positive effect on everybody. is it a risk to bring in obamacare individual mandate? at this last minute? it s something we have discussed for more than just two months. it s been in the hemisphere of conversation for a long time now. and now you have senator john mccain who was somebody who helped stop the repeal of obamacare just a couple months ago now coming out in a statement saying he supports this. i think that the momentum is moving forward in support of this. we need to get the house republicans on board, and then we ll see where the chips lie. the process is a sloppy process. and that s just governing. but it s significant when you point out john mccain who was the one who torpedoed one of trump s attempts to get rid of
randomly kill four others. welcome to early start, i m christine romans. dave briggs here, 4:31 eastern time. we start with weeks saying they didn t want to revisit the health care debate. senate republicans decided to do it any way. the revised gop tax bill released tuesday features a repeal of obamacare s requirement that all americans carry health insurance or pay a fine. republicans on the senate finance committee voting unanimously to scrap the so-called individual mandate. now conservatives in the house are lobbying their leaders to add a repeal of the individual mandate to the house republican tax bill. the house begins debate on that bill today with a vote on the sweeping overhaul of the tax code in the house scheduled for tomorrow. here is cnn s phil mattingly. christine and dave, for weeks it s been on the table and for weeks republican leaders made very clear they don t actually want to actually put it in the tax reform bill. and yet, it s there.
senate republicans hoping to pass tax reform by the end of the year now plan to include a repeal of obamacare s individual mandate to help pay for that bill. let s go to garrett haake standing by on capitol hill. senate republicans now trying to tie health care reform to tax reform. how is that going on the hill? well, krashgs unsurprisingly democrats are furious about it. they feel like this is an 11th-hour switch on which they ve been working with. there were a handful of democrats republicans thought would go with the tax bill. that s more or less out the window since the politics of health care have been reinjected into this. democrats say this is a hail mary effort to get the mandate out of obamacare when they couldn t do it by going through the front door. republicans don t really dispute that. here s senator john kennedy and