Kevin Brady

The Republican effort to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature health care law may have stalled, but lobbyists are pushing the GOP to continue to target the provisions the industry most despises: the law’s taxes.

House and Senate Republicans hope to push forward on a tax overhaul when Congress returns in September, an item they previously delayed in favor of health care. Repealing the 2010 health care law and its corresponding taxes would have helped simplify the GOP’s upcoming work, but those hopes were deflated when the Senate did not pass a repeal bill last month.

GOP congressional and administration leaders’ joint tax overhaul statement took one big item off the negotiating table Thursday but left almost everything else on it. And that’s likely by design. 

The official death of the border adjustment tax removes the most controversial idea from the tax overhaul conversation and provides GOP lawmakers and stakeholder groups with room to message on aspects of the tax rewrite effort that have garnered less attention. 

Lobbying groups, including those in the Koch brothers’ conservative political network, spent millions of dollars and mobilized voters nationwide in an effort to kill the border adjustment tax proposal. They won.

After the Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders Thursday offered their broad outline for a tax overhaul proposal that nixed the border adjustment tax, or BAT, industry groups did not hide their glee.

By LINDSEY MCPHERSON and JOHN T. BENNETTUpdated 5:39 p.m. | The decision by the White House and Republican leaders to drop a controversial border adjustment tax proposal as they proceed with negotiations on how to rewrite the tax code provides more questions than answers about where their effort is headed.

The border adjustment tax, known as the BAT, would have reversed the current way the United States taxes goods crossing its borders by taxing imports but exempting exports.

By ALAN K. OTA and LINDSEY MCPHERSON

Top Republican leaders said Wednesday they are close to a deal with the Trump administration on a broad set of tax goals that will guide overhaul efforts.

“Clearly, no budget, no tax reform.”

That comment made by House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady on Thursday, and then again for good measure on Monday, is the primary selling point on which House Republican leaders are hoping to whip up enough support to pass their fiscal 2018 budget resolution. Yet that pitch has done little to appease the naysayers.

Republicans’ partisan push to overhaul the health care system failed in the Senate, but House GOP lawmakers say they plan to stick to that approach in rewriting the tax code.

Since the start of the year, Republicans have said the health care and tax overhauls, the top two items on their legislative agenda, would likely be partisan efforts given wide policy gaps with Democrats on both issues.

The chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees on Tuesday declined to commit to releasing their unified tax overhaul plan by the end of the month after a key White House official a day earlier had said they hoped to have it “locked in place” before the August recess.

Republican leaders from the House, Senate and White House have been meeting regularly to discuss a tax overhaul, hoping to come up with a unified plan that both chambers of Congress can pass and the president can sign into law this year.

A widening fracas over offsets leaves House Republican leaders with tough choices as they try to settle on the scope of tax cuts and revenue-raising items in a package they are negotiating with their Senate counterparts and President Donald Trump.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin and his team face pressure from senators and the administration to loosen their demand for a revenue-neutral tax package. Some Republicans have even floated the idea of temporary tax cuts without any offsets like those enacted under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003.

In a quest for more revenue sources, Senate Republicans are considering leaving in place a tax on wealthy Americans after initially including its repeal in their legislation to overhaul the U.S. health insurance system.

The GOP is also discussing holding off on the repeal of other taxes included in the 2010 health law, one Republican lawmaker and lobbyists say. Such a move would free up additional funding that could then be allocated toward reducing health care costs for lower-income Americans, lawmakers say.