Senate Vote on House-Passed Tax Bill Is Still on Tap, Wyden Says

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says he’s working with Senate leaders to find a time to vote on the House-passed $78 billion bill that would restore expired business tax breaks and boost the child tax credit.

“Right now I’m working with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to get a time scheduled for the Senate to bring it up,” Wyden told an audience Thursday at the Tax Council Policy Institute’s symposium in Washington.

The bill has been a priority for companies as it includes more generous provisions for research and development, interest, and capital expenses.

Amid months of the bill foundering, the Finance leader resolved to not give up on the bipartisan legislation that he forged with House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

The legislation passed the House with a wide bipartisan majority but has hit a wall of Senate GOP opposition. Wyden said the debate this year doesn’t build confidence in how Senate lawmakers could successfully negotiate a significant tax bill next year.

“As we move forward to the proposal that Chairman Smith and I have put together to the Senate floor, people will see how connected these two are,” he said.

Schumer told reporters in April that he’d put the bipartisan tax package on the Senate floor if it had enough votes to clear the chamber. Republican senators have demanded changes to the bill or at least a chance to get votes on amendments, and Finance Committee ranking member Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) has said talks with Wyden ceased.

As lawmakers begin mulling what to do when a majority of the individual provisions from the 2017 GOP-led tax law expire, it will be important to find common ground to move a bill that likely will have financial implications in the trillions of dollars, Wyden said.

Wyden pledged to protect green energy credits from GOP efforts to nix them in the 2025 debate, and said he hopes to address changes to wealthy tax-avoidance strategies that his committee has recently investigated, including certain life insurance plans.

He said all provisions of the 2017 law would be on the table, not just those that are expiring. That includes the corporate rate, which Smith recently said some in the GOP conference want to see raised.