The Finance Committee tax and health sections reflecting Senate Republicans' plans for changing the House-passed One Big, Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA, H.R. 1) to extend Tax Cuts & Jobs Act (TCJA) provisions expiring at the end of 2025 and cut mandatory spending may not be released this week after all, as deliberations continue. Tax issues will nonetheless be front and center as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appears before congressional tax-writing committees for traditional annual hearings:

• the House Ways and Means Committee has set a hearing with Secretary Bessent for Wednesday, June 11 at 10 a.m.
• the Senate Finance Committee hearing with Secretary Bessent on "The President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget for the Department of Treasury and Tax Reform" is set for Thursday, June 12 at 10 a.m.

Morning Tax reported this morning: "Senate GOP leaders had hoped that the Finance Committee would be able to release its work this week. But it looks like the panel's portion of the Republican fiscal package will get pushed into the following week, as it deals with dicey issues like the higher cap for state and local deductions that might be crucial to getting a bill through the House and the phasing out of green energy incentives that has caused some heartburn in the Senate."

Punchbowl News reported that a "Big Six" meeting regarding the tax aspects of the reconciliation bill is likely this week with Secretary Bessent and National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), and Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO). The report said Crapo's cautious, consensus-building leadership style has helped Senate Republicans get this far; he is collaborating with House members after the two sides split over the House-passed 2024 Child Tax Credit/pre-cliffs bill that the Senate never considered; and that he will play a vital role in assembling Finance text for the bill.

"Crapo is known for his spare words, but also for his history of landing deals — and squashing ones he doesn't like, such as last year when he tanked a bipartisan tax bill negotiated by then-Finance Chair Ron Wyden and the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith," said a June 8 Politico story also focused on the chairman. "At the same time, longtime colleagues and aides say Crapo can sometimes play the role of committee consensus-builder to his detriment — and he may have to put that tendency aside as the clock ticks down to the GOP's self-imposed July 4 deadline to send Trump his 'big, beautiful bill.' "

Points of contention regarding the Senate's version of the OBBBA continue to be:

• The overall deficit impact (estimated by the Congressional Budget Office at $2.4 trillion over 10 years plus $550 billion in interest payments) and related concerns over the $5 trillion debt limit increase included in the bill
• The House bill's $40,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap for household incomes under $500,000, especially given that there are no Republican senators from heavily impacted states
• Whether to make permanent TCJA pre-cliffs on bonus depreciation, IRC Section 163(j) interest deductibility, and IRC Section 174 R&D expensing that are temporarily extended under the House bill
• Medicaid changes under the House bill, which some members view as onerous, and others say are necessary to limit program benefits to the most deserving populations

Leader Thune and Chairman Crapo have said they want to make the TCJA pre-cliff provisions permanent, and Senator Steve Daines (R-MT) declared that doing so was a red line for him to support the bill during a White House meeting last week. Bloomberg Government reported this morning: "To pay for the items, which most economists rank as the most pro-growth in the overall tax bill, senators may restrict temporary breaks on tips and overtime, which Trump campaigned on during last year's election in appeals to restaurant and hospitality workers. The White House wants to keep those provisions as is."

Some of these contentious issues were raised during Sunday political talk shows, though there isn't currently clarity on how the Senate will attempt to thread the needle to appease Republican Senators and ensure the amended bill can pass the House again. That will be necessary for it to become law, which leaders want to happen by July 4. Ideally, the President and GOP congressional leaders would like to see the House accept and vote on any Senate-passed bill so that the President could sign the legislation in early July, rather than go to conference either formally or informally to reconcile different House and Senate products. It remains unclear whether this objective can be met, however.

On Fox Sunday Morning Futures, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) expressed concerns over the debt limit increase, saying, "This is why my big objection to the bill is, they want to ask us to expand their credit line to $5 trillion … We should be giving them very limited tranches of debt expansion and make them prove to us that they are good with money. But by no means should we give them $5 trillion and say, 'Oh, just keep doing what you're doing.' They have a terrible record, so they need more restraint and more oversight, not less."

He posted on social media, "The spending proposed in this bill is unsustainable, we cannot continue spending at these levels if we want to truly tackle our debt."

On CNN's "State of the Union" June 8, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI), perhaps the most vocal critic of the overall bill based on fiscal issues, said, "And if we just pass this, if it's a one-and-done, we will not be really addressing the major problem here in terms of massive growing deficits and debt." He is looking for more significant deficit reduction, which could perhaps come in subsequent legislation.

As with the 2017 TCJA, central to the debate surrounding the bill is the degree to which cutting taxes promises to increase economic growth and therefore lead to new revenue. Speaker Johnson and others have pointed to the growth prospects of the bill, and he and other Republicans, including President Trump, have taken the relatively new approach of casting doubt upon the validity of CBO estimates.

A story in today's Wall Street Journal said: "Republicans and outside economists agree on the basic direction: tax cuts increase consumer spending and business investment, accelerating short-term growth. But they differ vastly on how large and meaningful that jump would be. The bill, according to public- and private-sector economists, would fall far short of Republicans' hoped-for boom."

On Fox News Sunday, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) said the House provision on SALT "shouldn't survive — we should not be subsidizing blue state governors' wasteful spending. That's exactly what — if that's in there, then Florida will be paying for the state government of New York, and that's wrong."

On CNN, Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a former House member and close Trump ally, defended the approach to Medicaid: "We're not talking about people that deserve and qualify for Medicaid or Medicare. What we're doing is getting rid of the waste and fraud. There's over 6 million people on Medicaid right now that do not qualify [under] current policies … And they're robbing Medicaid blind. And, therefore, it's almost becoming unsustainable for those that actually deserve it. Anybody that qualifies for Medicaid, they're not going to see a reduction in benefits. They're not going to see a reduction in coverage."

Congress — The House is in today with votes beginning at 6:30 p.m. on bills under the jurisdiction of the Judiciary Committee and Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Later in the week is a planned vote on a package of budget rescissions (H.R. 4), which would claw back $9.4 billion in approved spending on programs such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the public broadcasting networks PBS and NPR.

On Wednesday, June 11 at 10 a.m., the House Energy and Commerce Committee plans to hold a hearing on "Strengthening Domestic Manufacturing and the Health Care Supply Chain."

The Senate will convene at 3:00 p.m. today (Monday, June 9), with two votes at 5:30 p.m. related to the nominations of Brett Shumate to be an Assistant Attorney General and David Fotouhi to be Deputy Administrator of the EPA.