Tax plan hits procedural roadblock in Senate courtesy of the Parliamentarian News
Tax plan hits procedural roadblock in Senate courtesy of the Parliamentarian

The US Senate’s vote on the sweeping tax bill [JURIST report] approved earlier today by the House of Representatives hit a procedural bump after the Senate Parliamentarian struck three provisions of the conference committee bill under the Byrd Rule [materials] governing the content of bills passed through the reconciliation process.

The Parliamentarian found that the bill’s short name, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, must be stricken in favor of the more official, if less punchy, “An Act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018.”

More substantively, the Parliamentarian found that a provision defining which colleges and universities would be subject to a new tax on endowment earnings and a provision allowing the use of 529 savings plans for home-schooling costs also ran afoul of the Byrd Rule.

As a result, the bill on which the Senate is voting this evening is slightly different than that passed in the House earlier today. Because both houses must pass an identical bill before the President can sign it into law, this means that the House will have to vote on the bill again tomorrow, with the offending provisions stricken.

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