President Trump is now saying he has to do health-care reform before "phenomenal tax reform," but he's changed course on the order of those priorities before. Republicans have said that they’ll be able to write a tax reform bill that is revenue-neutral, by doing things such as lowering tax rates while simultaneously eliminating loopholes, thereby making the whole thing balance out. You may have heard it said that Republicans want to repeal the ACA before doing tax reform, because that would “free up” a large chunk of money that could then be factored into tax reform, getting them closer to the revenue-neutral score they’d need to make their tax changes permanent through reconciliation. It’s the changes to the tax code in that reform bill that matter. Now, once again, Republicans can pass tax reform that increases the deficit via reconciliation if they sunset it after 10 years.

Source: Washington Post April 17, 2017 17:21 UTC