On Wednesday, the Republican Steering Committee tapped Representative Kevin Brady (R-TX) to succeed Speaker Ryan as the committee’s chairman. Both he and his challenger, Representative Pat Tiberi (R-OH), are strong allies of S corporations and pass-through businesses. Representative Brady takes over from former Chairman Paul Ryan, the new House speaker. Brady, who was first elected to Congress in 1996, will become the seventh Texas Republican to chair a House committee. Several members of the Steering Committee said that while Tiberi is well liked, Brady’s experience was a deciding factor for the gavel.
This was Brady’s second run at the chairmanship, after being passed over for the gavel by Ryan at the beginning of this Congress.
The Wall Street Journal had an interview with the new Chairman, where Brady makes clear he wants tohave a robust tax extender package (yea!) this fall than then spend next year pushing the “step one, step two” plan for tax reform outlined by Paul Ryan in the past year:
Q: What’s the first thing you’re going to try to get accomplished this year?
A: We’re going to continue to tee up pro-growth tax reform. There’s two steps we can take that are real, one of them immediate, which is to negotiate a package of permanent provisions among those [expired tax breaks]. One, because it creates certainty for the economy. Two, you get a better bang for the buck for the tax provisions. And three, it’s honest scorekeeping. It identifies what truly are permanent parts of the code. I will pick that up and see if we can’t conclude a package that works for both parties.
