Senate GOP rejects House conservative pitch on corporate tax rates

House conservative proposals to raise corporate taxes to offset the cost of President-elect Trump’s tax package are going over like lead balloons in the Senate, where Republicans are warning their House counterparts to back off.

The Senate GOP argues that hiking corporate taxes could dampen economic activity, lead to foreign takeovers of U.S. corporations and result in job loss.

“Absolutely not,” Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) said of proposals to raise the corporate tax rate.

“We were trying to be competitive on the world stage when we dropped it to 21 percent,” he said. “To raise that is not the way to get an economy going.”

Some conservatives, notably Rep. Chip Roy (Texas), have floated the idea of raising the corporate tax rate by a few percentage points to ensure the budget reconciliation package Congress plans to pass later this year doesn’t add to the deficit.