Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday he and centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin had discussed moving a bill that would unwind parts of the Republican tax law enacted when President Donald Trump was in office.
The goal is to ease inflation, which is badly hurting President Joe Biden’s approval ratings as the 2022 midterm elections approach. Democrats are eyeing a fast-track budget process that would bypass the need for 60 votes in the Senate necessary to overcome a Republican filibuster.
“Look, reconciliation is very, very important,” Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said of the official budget process name. “I met with Sen. Manchin this morning. Our meetings were both preliminary and good, and we’re going to continue to keep talking,”
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Schumer added to reporters: “If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to re-undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates. No Republican is ever going to do that. So the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation.”
Manchin of West Virginia, who played a key role in killing the Democrats’ sweeping social spending bill last year by citing concerns about its impact on the national debt and deficit, met with the New York Democrat earlier in the day.
“We talked about the tax code and doing something to combat inflation. He is just as concerned about inflation as I am,” Manchin told reporters following the meeting. “Reconciliation to me is about getting inflation under control, paying down this debt, getting a handle on what’s going on.”
The West Virginia Democrat voiced an interest in potentially raising the corporate tax rate to 25% and the capital gains rate to 28%.
While Schumer said the talks are “preliminary,” Democrats could put wheels into motion as soon as early next month.
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To pass the reconciliation bill, Schumer would need to keep his entire caucus together due to the evenly split margins in the Senate. It is unclear if centrist Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who also played a role in blocking the Build Back Better legislation from moving forward, is open to the proposition.