The Jim Bakker Show

Trump says U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson not leaving post

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is not leaving, President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday, after U.S. officials on Thursday said the White House had a plan for CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him.

“The media has been speculating that I fired Rex Tillerson or that he would be leaving soon – FAKE NEWS! He’s not leaving and while we disagree on certain subjects, (I call the final shots) we work well together and America is highly respected again!” Trump said on Twitter.

The tweet linked to a picture of Tillerson being sworn in as secretary of state with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence looking on.

Senior administration officials on Thursday said that Trump was considering a plan to oust Tillerson, whose relationship with the president has been strained by the top U.S. diplomat’s softer line on North Korea and other policy differences, as well as by reports in October that he called the president a “moron.”

Tillerson has not directly addressed whether he made the comment, though his spokeswoman denied it. The New York Times on Thursday first reported the White House plan to replace him.

Asked to comment on some White House officials wanting him to resign, how the matter was being handled and what his plans were, Tillerson replied: “It’s laughable. It’s laughable.”

His comments came as he posed for pictures with Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj of the United Nations-backed government in Tripoli.

Tillerson visits Europe next week to attend NATO meetings in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday, an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) meeting in Vienna on Thursday and talks with French officials in Paris on Friday.

He is tentatively scheduled to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna on Thursday on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting, a senior State Department official told reporters.

(Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

Honduras awaits presidential vote count as army enforces curfew

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Honduras enforced a curfew on Saturday while still mired in chaos over a contested presidential election that has triggered looting and protests in which at least one person has died.

The government’s move on Friday evening to enact the nationwide curfew for 10 days and expand powers for the army and police was criticized by opposition leaders as a move to stifle protests over a presidential vote count that stalled for a fifth day without leaving a clear winner.

President Juan Orlando Hernandez has clawed back a thin lead over his challenger, TV-host Salvador Nasralla, but thousands of disputed votes could still swing the outcome.

Since last Sunday’s election, at least one protester has died, over 20 people were injured and more than 100 others were arrested for looting after opposition leaders accused the government of trying to steal the election by manipulating the vote count.

“The suspension of constitutional guarantees was approved so that the armed forces and the national police can contain this wave of violence that has engulfed the country,” said Ebal Diaz, member of the council of ministers, on Friday.

Under the decree, all local authorities must submit to the authority of the army and national police, which are authorized to break up blockades of roads, bridges and public buildings.

A 10-day dusk-to-dawn curfew started Friday night.

International concern has grown about the electoral crisis in the poor Central American country, which struggles with violent drug gangs and one of the world’s highest murder rates.

In the widely criticized vote count, Nasralla’s early lead on Monday was later reversed in favor of President Hernandez, leading Nasralla to call for protests.

The count stalled on Friday evening when the electoral tribunal said it would hand-count the remaining ballot boxes that had irregularities, comprising nearly 6 percent of the total vote.

The electoral tribunal said it was set to resume the vote count at 9 a.m. local time on Saturday, but Nasralla’s center-left alliance has refused to recognize the tribunal’s authority unless it recounts three regions with alleged vote irregularities.

The 64-year-old Nasralla is one of Honduras’ best-known faces and backed by former President Manuel Zelaya, a leftist ousted in a coup in 2009. He said on Friday that government infiltrators had started the looting and violence to justify a military curfew.

Hernandez, speaking to reporters after the curfew went into effect, said the government put the measure in place at the request of concerned citizen groups.

“As far as the curfew, I want to clarify that various sectors requested it…in order to guarantee the safety of the people,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Ana Isabel Martinez, Adriana Barrera and Daina Beth Solomon; Writing by Dave Graham and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Michael Perry)

Syrian government negotiator quits Geneva talks, says may not return

By Stephanie Nebehay and Lisa Barrington

GENEVA/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s government delegation quit U.N.-led peace talks in Geneva on Friday and said it would not return next week unless the opposition withdrew a statement demanding President Bashar al-Assad play no role in any interim post-war government.

“For us (this) round is over, as a government delegation. He as mediator can announce his own opinion,” government chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari said after a morning of talks, referring to U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura.

“As long as the other side sticks to the language of Riyadh 2 … there will be no progress,” Ja’afari said.

He was referring to a position adopted by Syrian opposition delegates at a meeting in Riyadh last week, in which they stuck to their demand that Assad be excluded from any transitional government.

Ja’afari went further in a televised interview with al-Mayadeen TV: “We cannot engage in serious discussion in Geneva while the Riyadh statement is not withdrawn.”

De Mistura put a brave face on the impasse, saying in a statement that he had asked the delegations to engage in “talks next week” and give their reactions to 12 political principles.

Previously there had been some speculation the opposition could soften its stance ahead of this week’s Geneva negotiations, in response to government advances on the battlefield.

The Syrian civil war, now in its seventh year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven 11 million from their homes. So far all previous rounds of peace talks have failed to make progress, faltering over the opposition’s demand Assad leave power and his refusal to go.

Pressed whether the government delegation would return to Geneva next week, Ja’afari replied: “Damascus will decide.”

Ja’afari said the statement insisting Assad leave power that was adopted by the opposition in Riyadh ahead of this week’s peace talks was a “mine” on the road to Geneva, and the opposition had purposefully undermined the negotiations.

“The language with which the statement was drafted was seen by us, the Syrian government, as well as by too many capitals, as a step back rather than progress forward, because it imposed a kind of precondition,” he said.

“The language is provocative, irresponsible,” he said.

The opposition, which held brief talks later with U.N. officials, rejected the charge that it was seeking to undermine the talks, and said it sought a “political solution”.

“We have come to this round with no preconditions,” opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi told reporters.

“Now, not coming back is a precondition in itself. It’s an expression or a reflection of a responsibility toward people who have been suffering for seven years now,” Aridi said.

Nasr Hariri, the opposition delegation chief, said earlier on Friday that his side had come to Geneva for serious, direct negotiations with Assad’s government. So far, government and opposition delegations have not negotiated face-to-face in any Syrian peace talks but have been kept in separate rooms.

“We call on the international community to put pressure on the regime to engage with this process,” Hariri said in a statement.

De Mistura said on Thursday the talks would run until Dec. 15, but the government delegation might return to Damascus to “refresh and consult” before a resumption probably on Tuesday.

(Additional reporting by Issam Abdallah, Tom Miles and Cecile Mantovani in Geneva; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Senate approves major tax cuts in victory for Trump

By David Morgan and Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate narrowly approved a tax overhaul, moving Republicans and President Donald Trump a big step closer to their goal of slashing taxes for businesses and the rich while offering everyday Americans a mixed bag of changes.

In what would be the largest change to U.S. tax laws since the 1980s, Republicans want to add $1.4 trillion over 10 years to the $20 trillion national debt to finance changes that they say would further boost an already growing economy.

“We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families across America,” Trump said in an early-morning tweet.

U.S. stock markets have rallied for months in the hope that Washington would provide significant tax cuts for corporations.

Celebrating their Senate victory, Republican leaders predicted the tax cuts would encourage U.S. companies to invest more and boost economic growth.

“We have an opportunity now to make America more competitive, to keep jobs from being shipped offshore and to provide substantial relief to the middle class,” said Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate.

The Senate approved their bill in a 51-49 vote with Democrats complaining that last-minute amendments to win over skeptical Republicans were poorly drafted and vulnerable to being gamed later by lawyers and accountants in the tax avoidance industry.

“The Republicans have managed to take a bad bill and make it worse,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “Under the cover of darkness and with the aid of haste, a flurry of last-minute changes will stuff even more money into the pockets of the wealthy and the biggest corporations.”

No Democrats voted for the bill, but they were unable to block it because Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority.

Talks will begin, likely next week, between the Senate and the House of Representatives, which has already approved its own tax bill.

Trump wants that to happen before the end of the year, allowing him and his Republicans to score their first major legislative achievement of 2017, despite controlling the White House, the Senate and the House since he took office in January.

Republicans failed in their efforts to repeal the Obamacare healthcare law over the summer and Trump’s presidency has been hit by White House in-fighting and by a federal investigation into possible collusion last year between his election campaign team and Russian officials.

The tax overhaul is seen by Trump and Republicans as crucial to their prospects at mid-term elections in November 2018, when they will have to defend their majorities in Congress.

In a legislative battle that moved so fast a final draft of the bill was unavailable to the public until just hours before the vote, Democrats slammed the proposed tax cuts as a give-away to businesses and the rich financed with billions of dollars in taxpayer debt.

The framework for both the Senate and House bills was developed in secret over a few months by a half-dozen Republican congressional leaders and Trump advisers, with little input from the party’s rank-and-file and none from Democrats.

Six Republican senators, who wanted and got last-minute amendments and whose votes had been in doubt, said on Friday they would back the bill and did so.

Senator Bob Corker, one of few remaining Republican fiscal hawks who pledged early on to oppose any bill that expanded the federal deficit, stood out as the lone Republican dissenter.

“I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that … could deepen the debt burden on future generations,” said Corker, who is not running for re-election.

KEY CHANGES

Numerous last-minute changes were made to the bill on Friday and in the early morning hours of Saturday.

One was to make state and local property tax deductible up to $10,000, mirroring the House bill. The Senate previously had proposed entirely ending state and local tax deductibility.

In another change, the alternative minimum tax (AMT), both for individuals and corporations, would not be repealed in full. Instead, the individual AMT would be adjusted and the corporate AMT would be maintained as is, lobbyists said.

Another change would put a five-year limit on letting businesses immediately write off the full value of new capital investments. That would phase out over four years starting in year six, rather than be permanent as initially proposed.

Under the bill, the corporate tax rate would be permanently slashed to 20 percent from 35 percent, while future foreign profits of U.S.-based firms would be largely exempted from tax — both changes pursued by corporate lobbyists for years.

On the individual side of the tax code, the top tax rate paid by the highest-income earners would be cut slightly.

The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank, analyzed an earlier but broadly similar version of the bill passed by the Senate tax committee on Nov. 16 and found it would reduce taxes for all income groups in 2019 and 2025, with the largest average tax cuts going to the highest-income Americans.

Two Republican senators announced their support for the bill on Friday after winning more tax relief for non-corporate pass-through businesses. These include partnerships and other companies not organized as public corporations, ranging from mom-and-pop concerns to large financial and real estate groups.

The bill now features a 23 percent tax deduction for such business owners, up from the original 17.4 percent.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said Trump controls more than 500 pass-through companies that will directly benefit. “So the president may be celebrating, but most Americans will rue this day,” Blumenthal said.

The Senate bill would gut a section of Obamacare by repealing a fee paid by some Americans who do not buy health insurance, a step critics said would undermine the Obamacare system and raise insurance premiums for the sick and the old.

Senator Susan Collins, a moderate Republican, said she obtained commitments from Republican leaders that steps would be taken later in separate legislation to minimize the impact of the repeal of the “individual mandate” fee.

(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Susan Heavey and Richard Cowan in Washington; Caroline Valetkevitch in New York; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Kieran Murray and Alexander Smith)

Senate grapples with tax cut plan’s impact on federal deficit

By David Morgan and Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Republicans will grapple on Friday with the possibility of adding a tax increase to sweeping legislation meant to cut taxes on businesses and individuals, aiming to win support from fiscal conservatives worried about the bill’s impact on the federal deficit.

With a mandatory 20 hours of Senate debate nearing expiration, the Republican lawmakers, who control the chamber, could move to a final vote late in the day after a procedural vote starting at 11 a.m. EST (1600 GMT) and a potentially chaotic “vote-a-rama” on tax bill amendments offered by both Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans were still wrangling behind the scenes over how to raise $350 billion or more in taxes over 10 years to prevent their legislation from ballooning the federal deficit if the proposed cuts fail to generate the expected economic growth.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and others were also working on deals to win support from party members who want better tax breaks for non-corporate pass-through businesses, a bigger child tax credit for families, and a $10,000 deduction for state and local property taxes.

Despite the hurdles, rank-and-file Republicans were still optimistic that they could approve the bill this week and agree this month to final legislation with the House of Representatives, which their party also controls.

“This is the big enchilada,” said Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. “We’ve still got a chance to do something good, and I’m going to try and do it.”

Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump and the Republican-led Congress have passed no major legislation. Their bill would be the biggest overhaul of the U.S. tax system since the 1980s.

Success is crucial to Republican political prospects in the November 2018 elections, when the party will fight to keep control of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

But the effort stumbled on Thursday when Republicans acknowledged that Senate rules would not permit them to add a mechanism to trigger tax increases in coming years if the bill fails to boost the economy enough to generate sufficient revenues to pay for tax cuts.

Senator Bob Corker and other Republicans concerned about the deficit impact had demanded the trigger in exchange for their support. On Thursday, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released a report saying the legislation would add $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, even with tax-driven economic growth projections factored in.

Republicans are now examining options that could raise taxes at a particular point over the next decade.

“We have an alternative, frankly a tax increase we don’t want to do, to try and address Senator Corker’s concerns,” said Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.

As drafted, the Senate bill would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay and reduce the tax burden on businesses and individuals, while ending many tax breaks.

Analysts said lawmakers could scale back tax cuts for corporations and top individual earners.

Asked if lawmakers would have to accept smaller tax cuts, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch said: “We’ll have to see.”

Early on Friday morning, Trump praised congressional Republicans’ work and blamed Democrats for trying to derail the bill, tweeting: “The Bill is getting better and better.”

Democrats have been united in their opposition to the bill, calling it a giveaway to the wealthy and corporations.

(Reporting by David Morgan and Amanda Becker; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Lisa Von Ahn)

Senate tax drama enters complicated end-game gambit

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Republican drive to push sweeping tax legislation through the U.S. Senate was hurtling on Thursday toward a dramatic conclusion, as Republican leaders pursued behind-the-scenes deals intended to secure enough votes for passage.

After an official 20 hours of debate, the Republican-controlled Senate was expected to begin a potentially chaotic “vote-a-rama” on amendments from Republicans and Democrats before moving to a final vote late on Thursday or early on Friday.

U.S. financial markets have rallied on optimism that the measure could pass, a sentiment shared by outside conservative groups that hope to see the first major overhaul of the U.S. tax code since 1986, when Republican Ronald Reagan was president.

“It’s the most unified effort I’ve seen on any issue in many years,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, a group aligned with billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch.

A Republican push to overturn Obamacare ended in an humiliating failure in the Senate earlier this year, and President Donald Trump and his Republican allies have since been under mounting pressure to enact a package of tax cuts for businesses and individuals before January, giving them their first major legislative victory.

Republicans acknowledge that failure to pass a tax bill could jeopardize their control of the Senate and House of Representatives in next year’s congressional elections.

Democrats say the Republican tax plan is a giveaway to corporations and the wealthy at the expense of working Americans.

The House approved its own tax bill on Nov. 16. If passed this week, the Senate legislation would need to be reconciled with the House version before a final bill could be sent to Trump.

As an initial action on Thursday, Senate Republicans were expected to take a procedural vote that would formally replace the House bill with their own legislation.

While campaign donors are strongly behind the push for tax cuts, the American public is sharply divided.

Among Americans aware of the Republican tax plan, 49 percent

said they were opposed, up from 41 percent in October, according

to a Nov. 23-27 Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday. The

latest online poll of 1,257 adults found 29 percent supporting

the plan and 22 percent saying they “don’t know.”

KEEPING THEM GUESSING

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell did not appear to have enough votes to pass the legislation as the day began, with several Republican lawmakers keeping their colleagues guessing about where they would come down in the end.

Republicans have a 52-48 majority in the 100-member Senate,

giving them enough votes to approve the bill if they can hold

together. Without Democratic support, they can afford to

lose support from no more than two of their own members. Vice President Mike Pence would be able to break a 50-50 tie.

The Senate voted along party lines to begin the debate on Wednesday and later turned away a Democratic attempt to return the legislation to the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee for reconsideration.

But some Republicans have withheld their support for final passage as they press Republican leaders for changes that would prevent tax cuts from expanding the federal deficit, allow Americans a federal deduction for up to $10,000 in property taxes and give bigger tax breaks to so-called pass-through enterprises, including small businesses.

The Senate bill would cut the U.S. corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay and reduce the tax burden on small businesses and individuals, while adding $1.4 trillion to a federal debt load that already surpasses $20 trillion.

Some Republicans want to lower the corporate tax rate to only 22 percent and forgo income tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

Democrats and independents have sought to persuade nonpartisan Senate officials to disqualify parts of the bill, including one to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, as impermissible under Senate rules, an aide said.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Over half of public comments to FCC on net neutrality appear fake: study

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – More than half of the 21.7 million public comments submitted to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission about net neutrality this year used temporary or duplicate email addresses and appeared to include false or misleading information, the Pew Research Center said on Wednesday.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump, proposed in April to scrap the 2015 landmark net neutrality rules, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access.

Pai has said the action would remove heavy-handed internet regulations. Critics have said it would let internet service providers give preferential treatment to some sites and apps and allow them to favor their own digital content.

From April 27 to Aug. 30 the public was able to submit comments to the FCC on the topic electronically. Of those, 57 percent used either duplicate email addresses or temporary email addresses, while many individual names appeared thousands of times in the submissions, Pew said.

For example, “Pat M” was listed on 5,910 submissions, and the email address john_oliver@yahoo.com was used in 1,002 comments. TV host John Oliver supported keeping net neutrality earlier this on his HBO talk show.

The flood of purportedly fake comments has made it difficult to interpret the public’s true thinking on net neutrality and has even spurred New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to investigate for the last six months who posted the comments to the FCC website.

Pew did not say how many of the comments supported or opposed the FCC’s proposal. With three Republican and two Democratic commissioners, the FCC is all but certain to approve the repeal.

Pew found that only 6 percent of submitted comments were unique while the rest had been submitted multiple times, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of times.

Thousands of identical comments were also submitted in the same second on at least five occasions. On July 19 at precisely 2:57:15 p.m. ET, 475,482 comments were submitted, Pew said, adding that almost all were in favor of net neutrality.

“In fact, the seven most-submitted comments (six of which argued against net neutrality regulations) comprise 38 percent of all the submissions over the four-month comment period,” the study said.

Pew said its analysis of the submissions “present challenges to anyone hoping to understand the attitudes of the concerned public regarding net neutrality.”

The regulatory agency will vote at a Dec. 14 meeting on Pai’s plan to rescind the rules championed by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

The rules bar broadband providers from blocking or slowing down access to content or charging consumers more for certain content, and treated internet service providers like public utilities.

(Reporting by Chris Sanders; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Democrats skip Trump meeting, raising risk of government shutdown

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic leaders in Congress skipped a meeting with President Donald Trump on Tuesday that was to have focused on the budget, raising the risk of a government shutdown next month with both sides far apart on the terms of an agreement.

After Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi informed Trump they would not attend the meeting at the White House, the president and Republican congressional leaders went ahead with the talks without them.

Trump left empty seats on either side of him, with name cards for Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, and Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives. He also criticized them as the cameras rolled during a picture-taking session.

“We have a lot of differences,” Trump said. “So they’ve decided not to show up. They’ve been all talk and they’ve been no action and now it’s even worse. Now it’s not even talk.”

Schumer and Pelosi said they pulled out of the meeting because of a tweet Trump sent earlier in the day attacking them as weak on illegal immigration and bent on raising taxes.

“I don’t see a deal!” the Republican president wrote on Twitter.

Pelosi tweeted after Trump’s White House session that “his empty chair photo opp showed he’s more interested in stunts than in addressing the needs of the American people. Poor Ryan and McConnell relegated to props. Sad!” she added, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan,

Trump said he would “absolutely blame the Democrats” if a government shutdown takes place.

A Dec. 8 deadline is looming for passing a spending measure needed to fund a wide range of federal government programs.Although Republicans control both chambers of the U.S. Congress, their leaders will likely need to rely on at least some Democratic votes to pass the measure.

Democrats have said they will demand help for the “Dreamers” – young people brought to the United States illegally as children – as part of their price for providing votes on the budget measure.

But Trump said in a tweet late on Tuesday: “I ran on stopping illegal immigration and won big. They can’t now threaten a shutdown to get their demands.”

Congress has three choices: approve a massive bill for more than $1 trillion to keep the government operating through Sept. 30, 2018; pass a shorter extension of current funding to buy more time; or fail to pass anything and risk a partial government shutdown.

On Capitol Hill, Schumer said he and Pelosi believed the best path forward would be to negotiate with Republican leaders in Congress instead of going to the White House for a “show meeting.”

(Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Senate tax drama intensifies as bill faces key panel vote

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s drive for a big U.S. tax cut package headed toward a new drama on Tuesday in the Senate, where a pair of Republican lawmakers demanded changes in exchange for their help in moving the measure forward.

Trump was due to lobby Republicans at their weekly policy luncheon in the U.S. Capitol, with the Senate poised for a possible vote on tax legislation as early as Thursday.

The president has called on Republicans to deliver a tax bill to his desk before Christmas. The House of Representatives has already approved its version of the package, which would cut taxes for businesses and individuals.

But a Senate Budget Committee hearing on Tuesday, which Republican leaders have hoped will send legislation to a full Senate vote, has hit a potential hurdle with Republicans Ron Johnson and Bob Corker saying they may vote against the measure.

Their opposition could be the first major obstacle for the Republican tax overhaul in the Senate, where earlier this year political infighting prevented the party from overturning the Obamacare healthcare law.

Johnson and Corker both say they will back the tax cut package if their separate concerns are satisfied. Corker, a prominent fiscal hawk, wants a measure that would prevent the tax bill from causing the federal deficit to balloon. Johnson wants a better deal for so-called pass-through enterprises that include small businesses.

Senators were working “feverishly” to address concerns, Corker told CNBC on Tuesday morning.

“I know it’s important not just to me but numbers of members who want to make sure that if for some reason these projections are off – we don’t have the growth that’s been laid out, it doesn’t generate revenues – that we’re not passing on increased debt to future generations,” he said.

Two Republican “no” votes at the committee hearing would stall the effort, as Republicans control the 23-member committee by only one vote and no Democrats are expected to support the bill.

Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, have yet to score a major legislative victory since Trump took office in January. After their failed push to repeal Obamacare, they are eager to score a win before next year’s midterm elections, when control of the House and the Senate is at stake.

TAX CUTS, DEFICIT RISES

The Senate bill would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent after a one-year delay. It would impose a one-time, cut-rate tax on corporations’ foreign profits, while exempting future foreign profits from U.S. taxation.

But it would also add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the first decade, according to congressional analysis. Republicans have said that economic growth spurred by tax cuts would generate enough new tax revenue to eliminate any new deficit.

The nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation is not expected to release a full macroeconomic analysis of the tax bill head of a Senate vote.

As a result, Corker and other Republican deficit hawks, including Senator James Lankford, have been holding talks with Senate tax writers and the administration about adding a provision that would raise tax rates if revenues fall short of expectations.

Other lawmakers have expressed concern that the Senate bill could effectively raise, not cut, the amount of tax paid by some people because it would eliminate a popular federal income tax deduction for state and local tax payments. They are also concerned it could increase health insurance costs for people with medical conditions.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO), another nonpartisan research unit of Congress, said the number of Americans with health insurance would fall by 13 million by 2027 under the Republican tax bill, which would repeal an Obamacare federal fine meant to encourage people to buy health insurance.

The CBO said this would make people with incomes below $30,000 net losers under the bill, and most of those earning more would be net winners, especially those with incomes between $100,000 and $500,000.

If the Senate manages to pass the tax bill, its version and the House version will have to be reconciled into a piece of legislation that both chambers must approve before it can be signed into law by Trump.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and Andy Sullivan; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Frances Kerry)

Trump Panama hotel owners trying to strip president’s name -report

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Owners of the Trump International Hotel in Panama City are trying to strip the president’s name from the building and remove his company from management, the Associated Press reported on Monday.

When it was completed in 2011, the 70-floor building was the future U.S. president’s first international hotel venture, a complex including apartments and a casino in a waterfront building that has earned Trump between $30 million and $50 million.

In August this year, Miami-based Ithaca Capital Partners completed its purchase of the hotel amenities and the majority of the units in the Trump International Hotel.

In October, Ithaca proposed removing the Trump Organization’s directors from the hotel board and sending a notice of default to Trump, to begin terminating Trump’s link to the property, after complaints over alleged mismanagement, the AP reported.

“Not only do we have a valid, binding and enforceable long-term management agreement, but any suggestion that the hotel is not performing up to expectations is belied by the actual facts,” the Trump Organization said in a statement.

Ithaca did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump licensed his brand to the luxury project and provided hotel management. A Reuters investigation published in November found that alleged fraudster Alexandre Ventura Nogueira had sold between one-third and one-half of the advance sales for the Trump Ocean Club, as the complex including the hotel and apartments is known. (http://reut.rs/2zOaBYo)

The story, reported in conjunction with U.S. broadcaster NBC News, detailed how Nogueira did business with a Colombian money launderer and two criminals from the former Soviet Union.

Nogueira told Reuters and NBC how, in the project’s early days, he had participated in business meetings with Ivanka Trump and that she had endorsed his recommendation to sell the apartments for a higher price.

Ivanka Trump declined to comment on the allegations, while the Trump Organization said it did not remember Nogueira.

Earlier in November, the Trump Organization said it would give up management of the Trump SoHo hotel in New York City by the end of the year.

The Trump Ocean Club Panama Owners Association could not be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Christine Murray, Stefanie Eschenbacher and Ned Parker; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Sign up for Jim Bakker Show