House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Monday that the panel will hold two more tax-reform hearings in July.
One of the hearings will focus on the benefits of tax reform for small businesses, while the other will focus on the benefits for families and individuals, Brady said.
Tax reform is one of the top items on President Trump and congressional Republicans’ agenda. Brady and other congressional leaders on the tax effort have been meeting regularly with Trump administration officials on the issue — most recently on Thursday.
“I think we continue to make good progress toward a single, unified tax-reform plan to be sent to the president’s desk this year,” Brady said.
{mosads}The Ways and Means Committee held two hearings on tax reform in May. One centered on how tax reform could impact the economy, while the other focused on a controversial proposal to tax imports, known as border adjustment, that Brady and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have championed. Many of the witnesses at those hearings were business leaders.
Democrats have been pushing for additional hearings. Earlier this month, Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee’s tax-policy subcommittee, urged Brady and tax-policy subcommittee Chairman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) to hold a series of hearings about how tax reform would affect the middle class. Doggett also said that the witnesses should be more diverse and that Democrats should be able to invite more than one witness to each hearing.
Brady said that lawmakers haven’t decided yet whether July’s hearings would be convened by the full committee or by the tax-policy subcommittee.