Democrats' successful challenge to three minor provisions in the GOP tax plan that forced a Wednesday re-vote in the House highlights a looming fight over the inevitable rash of technical corrections that will need to be made in 2018, The Washington Post reports.
Given the warp speed with which Republicans were moving to get this done before the end of the year and the complexity of the tax code and its language, there are bound to be hundreds of drafting errors that will need to get corrected.
However, Senate Republicans will need at least nine Democrats' votes to get to the 60 necessary to formally amend changes.
And Democrats have a long memory from similar problems with the Obamacare legislation.
"Given how intransigent they were on (a technical corrections package) for the Affordable Care Act, I'm skeptical Dems would bail them out of their mistakes," a Democratic leadership aide told the Post.
Tax experts who poured over the tax reform bill pre-conference found landmines aplenty that could cost the government billions in mistake-created loopholes on the corporate tax piece alone.
"The failure of my friends to solicit input or do that in a way that would be responsible makes it hard to think about how you fix something that I think will take us a decade to unwind," Finance Committee Democrat Sen. Mark Warner told the Post.
Senate Republicans have one friendly face on the blue side.
"Anything I can do to make things better, I'm going to do it," Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin told the Post. "I always look at the concerns we have, the adjustments that need to be made, and if it makes sense to me and I can go home and explain it, I'll vote for it."
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