Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford said it’s a misleading attack on Republicans to say that the tax reform bill expected to be passed this week was written in a hasty fashion.
Lankford said on CBS’ “Face The Nation” the tax bill is actually the culmination of years of work.
“This tax bill itself has been over a year in the works. In fact, if you go back to the original draft of it about three years ago coming the Kemp plan,” he said, “the House released that proposal on tax reform in January of this year, White House early in the summer. This has not been a rush process, this has been 12 months in the making and multiple hearings over the past year and leading back to earlier work that was done several Congresses ago.”
“I know that the theme of this has been it's been rushed, because a lot of people haven't started paying attention until the very end.”
The Senate is expected to pass a bill Tuesday that was agreed to in a conference committee of negotiators from the House and Senate last week.
Trump administration officials, like Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, are confident the president will be signing the tax reform bill into law before Christmas.
The IRS is prepared to allow the tax cut to start taking effect as early as February, according to Mnuchin.
