progressives start by putting people first, putting working families first. they started with a huge tax cut for the largest companies. that s probably 600, $700 billion. then they decide they had to match that by giving the most well off people who have partnerships or s-corpses a huge tax cut. at the end of the day they really did not have very much left over for middle class families. so many are getting an actual tax increase, which is truly stunning. and bob corker, who has been pretending you might even say to be a holdout on this thing. he voted for it procedurally today, his big worry has been the deficit. today he said after agreeing in principle with senate membership on a trigger mechanism to ensure greater fiscal responsibility should economic growth estimates not be realized, uvoted to advance this important piece of
today he said after agreeing in principle with senate membership on a trigger mechanism to ensure greater fiscal responsibility should economic growth estimates not be realized, uvoted to advance this important piece of legislation. gene, he is saying he wants a trigger mechanism to go into effect if the deficit starts to go up more than the republicans are projecting it will go up. but they are projecting it will go up $1.5 trillion. yeah, i mean look, i like bob corker. we work together well. i respect him. but with all due respect, you don t deal with gimmicks by creating a brand-new gimmick. this $1.5 trillion deficit increase is probably going to be larger when you actually take the gimmicks out. it could easily be closer to $2 trillion. so corker says well let s put in a provision. it s kind of like the whipping boy provision. if the corporate tax cuts don t bring in enough revenue, we ll
legislation. gene, he is saying he wants a trigger mechanism to go into effect if the deficit starts to go up more than the republicans are projecting it will go up. but they are projecting it will go up $1.5 trillion. yeah, i mean look, i like bob corker. we work together well. i respect him. but with all due respect, you don t deal with gimmicks by creating a brand-new gimmick. this $1.5 trillion deficit increase is probably going to be larger when you actually take the gimmicks out. it could easily be closer to $2 trillion. so corker says well let s put in a provision. it s kind of like the whipping boy provision. if the corporate tax cuts don t bring in enough revenue, we ll raise taxes on middle class americans. well, either that s not going to happen and it s just a gimmick to give them cover for this huge
trillion to our deficits and debt and that overwhelmingly favors the wealthiest americans and the most profitable corporations. senator, early on, bob corker expressed concern about this bill. and skepticism because it did add $1.5 trillion to the national debt and said the economy wasn t going to get enough of a bump for it to make sense in the long run. does it look like bob corker and others who expressed concern early on are now buckling? a number of real fiscal conservatives who continue to be concerned of deficits and debt like senator corker are trying to add into this bill some sort of trigger mechanism that would roll back some of the bigger tax cuts if the growth that s promised doesn t materialize and deficits soar. that might be too little, too late to fix the hole in our annual budget that would be caused by this bill but i at least commend senator corker for trying to slow down this hurdling train and look at it and try to fix it.
twists to still deal with going forward. what does that trigger mechanism going to look like on the debt? how will they pay for some of the things that senator collins wants? in the end, folks look like they re a little morement on miss if i can this bill may get reported on by the end of the week. on the shutdown, it just seems the president does not realize who has the leverage going into this. even in this unified situation where his party controls congress, he controls the white house. they need democrats. and he needs democrats for things that he wants. like increasing the defense spending. it is not just what democrats want in terms of daca. so he gave democrats a very easy pass on this meeting in something that he needs them more for. john harwood on the taxes, you ve covered this a lot for the new york time. cnbc.