Congress sets sights on tax reform

WASHINGTON—After failing to coalesce around healthcare legislation, GOP lawmakers are ready to move on to tax reform. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., released a joint statement along with key committee chairmen and White House officials to promote future tax legislation. “We are all united in the belief that the single most important action we can take to grow our economy and help the middle class get ahead is to fix our broken tax code,” they wrote. The vision statement didn’t include any numbers and offered few details. But after months of lobbying his colleagues, Ryan included one major compromise: abandoning plans for a border adjustment tax by which the United States would tax imports but not exported goods and services. Ryan said committees in the House and Senate are already drafting legislation to fill in the details, and he expects the president to sign a new tax code into law by the end of the year. He told Fox Business that despite recent legislative setbacks, Republicans are on the same page: “I feel much more confident that we’re going to stick the landing on tax reform because we have now said we have consensus, here’s the framework, let’s go get it done.”