Congress' failure to pass healthcare reform has done more than break President Donald Trump campaign promise to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare, it has compromised the administration's leverage in tax reform and jeopardized "a very shrink'd down version," President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist said Sunday.
"The guys who torpedoed healthcare are threatening to torpedo tax reform," Norquist told Fox Business' "Sunday Morning Futures."
"I believe we will get a tax reform package this year," Norquist concluded. "If, however, the [House] Freedom Caucus sinks healthcare and sinks normal tax reform, we could end up with a very shrink'd down version of tax reform."
Effective tax reform before the end of President Trump's first year has to come with a revisit of healthcare first by "those Republicans who undermined Trump."
"By holding things up for two weeks, they may have killed reforming healthcare, if they don't get back to the table, [but] they could have permanently damaged, crippled, tax reform," Norquist told host Maria Bartiromo.
Norquist said current tax reform legislation will be "a trillion dollar short" without healthcare reform.
"This is what they didn't vote for: This is a trillion dollars of tax reduction," Norquist told Bartiromo. "That was in the Obamacare tax repeal bill. It also block granted an entire entitlement, medicaid, something Republicans wanted to do going back to the Gingrich years — as well as expanding HSAs.
"If you do that, you are a trillion dollars closer — a trillion dollars every decade — to be where we want to be with tax reform. Together you have taken to giant leaps forward toward growth."
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