Senate Republicans Clash on Taxes

Republicans as a rule oppose tax increases. But a squabble has emerged among Senate Republicans over whether any tax hikes are acceptable at all, The Hill reports.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, has gone further than his GOP colleagues. Hatch, who will probably encounter a conservative opponent in next year’s Republican Senate primary, stubbornly resists any possible tax increase — a popular position among hardcore conservatives.

And he has told fellow Republicans that he’ll do all he can to protects industry-specific tax breaks against attempts to dump them in order to increase government revenue. But several Republican senators, including Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, are mulling a plan to dump billions of dollars of tax subsidies.