Members of the most conservative caucus in the House of Representatives are ready to share their vision for a tax overhaul, welfare reform, and other legislative priorities.

Tax reform is overdue, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

“American voters have demanded a simplified tax code that allows our economy to grow, businesses to thrive, and families to keep more of their money,” Meadows said. “Republicans in Congress have promised for years that if given the opportunity, we would deliver on this goal. It’s our responsibility to do nothing less.”

Meadows and other caucus members will outline their ideas Friday at 9:30 a.m. during an event at The Heritage Foundation.

Repealing Obamacare remains a top priority, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, a former chairman of the 2-year-old caucus of about 30 House conservatives, said.

“It’s in the Senate now, we just need to get it done,” Jordan told The Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday. “Hopefully it’s [as] close to what we passed in the House as possible. Hopefully the Senate can approve what was passed in the House. However, it is up to the Senate now.”

The House voted by a razor-thin 217-213 on May 4 to pass Republicans’ revised Obamacare replacement bill after President Donald Trump worked with House Speaker Paul Ryan to bring together House conservatives and centrists on the amended version.

Jordan also said he hopes to address the contested proposal for a “border adjustment tax” as part of overhauling the tax code. The House’s Republican leadership backed the idea last year as part of a tax reform package.

“I think one of the keys for me is stopping the border adjustment tax,” Jordan said. “Just from a purely philosophical standpoint, I don’t see how it’s helpful to put a whole new tax on the American economy, on the American people. So just from a philosophical plane, I’m opposed to it.”

Opponents say such a tax would discourage import-intensive businesses by increasing the cost of their products consumed in America while exported goods and services are tax-free, The Daily Signal previously reported.

But Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and a leading proponent of the tax, said it “restores America as the best place on the planet to do business.”

The tax “is already pretty much dead on arrival,” Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., another member of the Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal.

“It just creates an internal food fight between exporters and importers,” Brat said in an interview Wednesday. “The White House doesn’t want it, the Senate says it’s dead.”

Brat said caucus members have a plan to help make up for lost revenue if lawmakers defeat the tax proposal.

Part of the solution involves welfare reform, the Virginia Republican said:

It goes along with tax reform because you are strengthening the labor markets, in the meantime, you are getting able-bodied people back in the workforce, along with tax cuts that are going to stimulate job production and the economy, so it’s a win-win and that’s the goal, right? Our measure of success is how many people we get back in the workforce and off of federal programs.

The Freedom Caucus is in favor of doing some heavy lifting on welfare reform, so every able-bodied person gets into the workforce, and we think there’s about $400 or $500 billion in savings there that helps you get tax reform across the board.

Adam Michel, a policy analyst specializing in taxes at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in a recent commentary that the proposed border adjustment tax would raise “about $1 trillion over 10 years, used to partially finance other beneficial reforms.”

Jordan said the merits of revenue-neutral tax policy, which, for tax cuts, requires offsetting revenue elsewhere, should be part of the discussion.

“I would say ‘revenue neutral’ is Washington-speak [for] saying, ‘The tax burden is going to stay the same, we’re just going to shift around who pays what,’” Jordan said, adding:

And in that scenario, that usually means the connected class gets a good deal and the middle class gets a bad deal.

Also expected to attend the Heritage event are Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, and Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C. The event will be livestreamed here. (For more from the author of “House Conservatives Float Ideas for Tax Overhaul, Welfare Reform” please click HERE)

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There seems to be a serious disconnect nowadays between what conservatives are, and what they are accused of being.

Campus leftists thoughtlessly dub conservatives “racists” and “homophobes,” and regularly fling those epithets on both conservative students and right-leaning speakers who come to campus.

This misunderstanding of conservative values is deeply unfortunate, and it comes amid a growing tendency on American college campuses to shut down debate and villainize those with whom the status quo disagrees.

One campus conservative group, the Hood College Republicans, decided to push back on the trend and to re-engage their campus.

In an attempt to reopen dialogue and clearly convey their beliefs, the group’s members created a display on campus with various quotes and graphics describing conservative values.

The display admittedly hit on some controversial issues. Students and faculty were particularly concerned over a quote from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, which stated of transgender people, “Biology is biology; men can’t magically become women and women can’t magically become men.”

Students and faculty members called the display “hateful” and “propaganda.” The president of Hood College wrote in an email that a review will take place to see if the display violates college rules, citing that it is possible for the Hood College Republicans to receive sanctions.

In a statement released by Hood College Republicans, the group expressed deep concern over the administration’s response to its display:

The handling of the situation by the school has demonstrated the extreme bias against free speech and diversity of thought for conservative views on campus, saying that the espousing of such views was offensive and dangerous. The administration has also tried to claim that we have been committing harassment and discrimination simply by expressing such views on paper. Our members have personally received violent threats from members of the Hood Community and have been regularly targeted online, with many on and off campus citing us as a hate group.

This story, like so many others we hear from college campuses today, underscores the true extent to which the First Amendment is under attack at American universities.

The reality of politically correct campus culture does not always come in large violent protests as we saw at Berkeley or Middlebury. The more frequent reality is conservative viewpoints, such as those advertised by Hood College Republicans, being quietly forced out.

For example, Peter Wood recently wrote for The Federalist that a professor at Springfield College is being forced out for teaching a course on “Men in Literature,” which did not sit well with campus feminists.

It should go without saying that students at Hood College, and at every college, must have their First Amendment rights protected. This basic freedom guaranteed by our Constitution should be respected in all areas of American life.

Teaching the importance of such freedoms should be a top priority for our American universities, which used to serve as laboratories for democratic thought and factories of an educated citizenry.

But today, our universities’ main product appears to be thought-followers, not thought-leaders.

As students and faculty appear to be doubling down on their war against free speech, university administrators must stand firm to protect the most basic constitutional rights of their students.

After all, the true test of free speech is how well we tolerate those we most disagree with. (For more from the author of “Conservatives Fight for Free Speech at a Far-Left College” please click HERE)

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GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill are committed to using a budget tool called reconciliation to send a bill repealing Obamacare to President-elect Donald Trump’s desk.

Though Republicans are settled on getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, fault lines have emerged between GOP lawmakers who disagree on when exactly the health care law should be repealed and, to a lesser extent, which Obamacare provisions to include in the reconciliation bill.

On one side are Republicans like Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine, who have said they would like to see enactment of Obamacare’s repeal delayed until 2019 or beyond, which would give the GOP-led Congress time to craft, pass, and implement a replacement for the health care law.

“I’d like to do it tomorrow, but reality is another matter sometimes,” Hatch, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, told The Washington Post. “We have to live with the real world, and the real world right now is that the Democrats won’t help with anything.”

But opposite those Republicans are conservatives like Reps. Mark Walker and Mark Meadows, both from North Carolina, who want to see repeal enacted in the first few months of Trump’s administration.

“We need to show some urgency,” Walker told The Daily Signal. “I won’t put it in how many days, but over the first few months, the repeal needs to be enacted out of the gate.”

Unlike Walker, who will take over as chair of the Republican Study Committee next year, Meadows has mapped out a timeline to repeal the health care law within Congress’ first 100 days, then pass and implement a replacement over a span of roughly 17 months.

“We need to have a very aggressive timeline on repeal,” Meadows, who recently took over as chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Daily Signal. “What I would be hopeful for is a replacement that would come shortly after that, but to combine the two would be a mistake in that it would slow down the repeal process.”

Republicans plan to use reconciliation—which allows a bill to pass the Senate with just 51 votes—to repeal Obamacare, and are looking to pass a reconciliation bill during the first days of the 115th Congress, which begins Jan. 3.

They now have the support of the White House.

During an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday, Reince Priebus, President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming chief of staff, signaled that the Trump administration agrees that Congress should use reconciliation within the administration’s first nine months to repeal Obamacare.

“We’re probably going to lead with Obamacare repeal and replace,” Priebus told Hewitt. “Then we’ll have a small tax reform package at the end of April. So I think what you’re looking at between two tax reform packages and reconciliation in the first nine months … what essentially comes down to three basically different budget packages.”

Though most agree that the dismantling of the 2010 health care law should come before Congress starts to tackle the proposal to replace Obamacare, others say that a delayed enactment for repeal occurring in 2019 or beyond would ease the transition for those currently enrolled in plans purchased on the exchanges.

Under Meadows’ timeline, leaders in the House and Senate would draft reconciliation instructions—which tell budget leaders what to include in the bill—and pass the legislation within their first 14 legislative days.

Repeal would then take place within the first 100 days, which Meadows said would provide insurers time to begin crafting plans for 2018 that aren’t required to adhere to the insurance mandates created by the Affordable Care Act.

Those regulations, opponents of the health care law say, caused the cost of premiums to rise.

Under Meadows’ plan, implementation of a replacement would happen over the span of roughly 17 to 18 months, which would allow the Trump administration to work through new regulations for the 2019 plan year.

“Adjusting in six months, that’s a herculean leap,” Meadows said. “Adjusting in a 17- to 18-month time frame is certainly something that all the insurance providers can do, and they’ve been asked to do much more in adjusting to the Affordable Care Act with less specificity coming from the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Already, Meadows said he is seeking input from at least two insurance providers on a viable plan to repeal and replace the law.

While the North Carolina Republican believes their contribution will present congressional leaders with a “compelling case” as to why the law needs to be rolled back quickly, he’s adamant that leaving it in place for even a few years will hurt consumers.

“A gradual wind down will still create perverted markets with regards to health insurance,” Meadows said. “I don’t know of any argument that would suggest that a three- to five-year wind down will make it less onerous on the American people.”

A Place to Start

Budget leaders and staff are already discussing what should be included in the reconciliation bill that would repeal Obamacare, and they’re using the legislation crafted in 2015 and subsequently passed by Congress as a blueprint.

That reconciliation bill repealed the individual and employer mandates, Medicaid expansion, and Cadillac and medical device taxes. The legislation also stripped the government of its authority to operate the federal and state-run exchanges, and lessened the fine for failing to comply with the mandates to $0, which was needed to abide by Senate rules.

Through that legislation, Republicans already charted a successful course for repealing Obamacare, one that received the stamp of approval from the Senate parliamentarian.

But both Walker and Meadows, along with Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, believe that the bill crafted next year should go further.

“That’s the minimum,” Walker said of the 2015 bill. “That needs to be the starting place, not the ending place.”

In an op-ed for National Review, Walker and Lee called for the next reconciliation bill to also repeal Obamacare’s insurance mandates, which include the essential health benefits requirement, the ban on limiting or denying coverage to consumers with pre-existing conditions, and the contraception mandate.

“When government bureaucrats and politicians decide that every insurance policy must cover free doctor visits and abortifacients, Americans who don’t need those options end up paying more for products they don’t want,” Walker and Lee wrote. “That’s great for the insurance companies, but not for taxpayers or consumers.”

Abortifacients are drugs that cause abortions.

There is skepticism as to whether a repeal of the insurance mandates would pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian, who has the authority to strike out parts of a reconciliation bill.

But the trio of Republicans believe that lawmakers should at least attempt to eliminate the mandates.

“To leave some of these aspects in place is not an excuse the American people are ready to accept,” Meadows said.

Dissent

Both Meadows and Walker told The Daily Signal that though they would like to see a reconciliation bill for next year go further than that passed in 2015, they would still support a bill that mirrors the one crafted more than one year ago.

But Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is threatening the GOP’s ability to pass the budget resolution—one that would include the reconciliation instructions to repeal Obamacare.

In an op-ed in Time, Paul pledged to vote against the budget resolution.

“I will not vote for any budget that doesn’t have a plan to balance, regardless of what is attached to it, and I’m calling on other conservatives in the Senate to take the same stand,” the Kentucky Republican said.

Just 51 votes in the Senate are needed for the budget to pass, and Republicans hold 52 seats in the 115th Congress.

Democrats and independents hold a total of 48 seats, so if Paul and one other GOP senator decide not to support the fiscal roadmap, Vice President-elect Mike Pence would be the tiebreaker.

But waiting for Pence to vote would mean the bill repealing Obamacare couldn’t be voted on until after he and Trump are sworn into office on Jan. 20.

So far, it doesn’t appear that Paul has support from other conservatives.

Meadows and Walker said they support Paul’s calls for a balanced budget, but wouldn’t go so far as to oppose the budget resolution that would be the vehicle for Obamacare’s repeal.

“Am I with him in terms of believing that a debt ceiling increase and a future budget must balance and must be on a path to balancing? Without a doubt,” Meadows said, “so it may be more a tactical question of difference versus a strategic question that we differ on.”

Additionally, many conservatives in both chambers, including Lee, voted in support of the budget resolution for 2016 specifically because it instructed congressional leaders to draft a reconciliation bill repealing Obamacare. (For more from the author of “Conservatives Split From GOP Leaders Over Timing of Obamacare Repeal” please click HERE)

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