Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is holding up progress on the Republican tax bill, according to the Wall Street Journal editorial board.
Rubio and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on Wednesday said they would file an amendment to change the child tax credit, to make it refundable up to a person's payroll tax liability, and to increase the corporate tax rate to pay for it, "among other expensive tweaks," the board wrote Thursday.
The senators' change would be a "disincentive to work and we would have thought antithetical to conservative principles," the Wall Street Journal board wrote.
The call to increase the corporate tax rate to 22 percent from the tax bill's plan to cut it to 20 percent is "destructive," according to the board. That cut to 20 percent will help the U.S. become more competitive, the board wrote, noting that Ireland's rate is 12.5 percent.
The child tax credit was increased for Rubio and Lee already, the board said.
"Senate tax writers have already indulged the Rubio-Lee caucus beyond what any two senators deserve . . . senators who demand ransom should at least stay bought," the board wrote in The Journal.
Rubio's "child credit obsession" could be a means to shore up his status as a social conservative for a future presidential run, the board wrote. "Yet voters who are looking for a candidate who understands what makes America — and American families — prosper will have to look elsewhere," the Wall Street Journal board wrote.
Ryan Ellis, writing in Forbes on Wednesday, also critiqued Rubio's child tax credit expansion amendment. By calling for the corporate tax rate to be 22 percent instead of 20, Rubio has "attached what is perhaps the most politically inadvisable of all possible pay-fors," Ellis wrote.
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