Bob Corker Has No Idea How the Provision That Will Make Him A Lot Of Money Made It Into the Tax Bill He Wasn't Going to Vote for But Now Is Going to Vote For
Bob Corker was among the last remaining Senate Republican holdouts on the broadly unpopular GOP tax plan until he wasn’t. On Friday, the Tennessee Republican announced he would support the bill he had once criticized for ballooning the deficit.
In a statement explaining why he changed his mind, Corker wrote:
After many conversations over the past several days with individuals from both sides of the aisle across Tennessee and around the country—including business owners, farmers, chambers of commerce and economic development leaders—I have decided to support the tax reform package we will vote on next week.
This bill is far from perfect, and left to my own accord, we would have reached bipartisan consensus on legislation that avoided any chance of adding to the deficit and far less would have been done on the individual side with items that do not generate economic growth.
But after great thought and consideration, I believe that this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make U.S. businesses domestically more productive and internationally more competitive is one we should not miss.
You may notice that there is nothing in this statement about how changes to the bill persuaded him on its merits. What seems to have happened instead is that the pressure campaign to bring Corker on board worked as it was supposed to. Corker attributes this push to constituents, but it seems far more likely—given how unpopular the bill is with most of the public—that the push came from his fellow members of Congress, eager as they were to pass the thing before the holiday recess.