18 GOP senators vote to raise taxes on the rich to pay for rural hospital fund

Eighteen Republican senators, including former Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), voted to advance an amendment sponsored by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to raise taxes on ultra wealthy income earners to help rural hospitals facing steep Medicaid cuts.

The GOP senators voted for a motion to waive a budget point-of-order against Collins’s amendment to establish a new $39.6 percent tax bracket for individuals who earn more than $25 million in annual income and married couples who earn more than $50 million annually.

The proposal would be used to double the size of the rural hospital relief fund in the GOP megabill from $25 billion to $50 billion.

The procedural motion failed on a lopsided vote of 22 to 78, but the result surprised some Senate insiders.

One senior Republican aide expressed shock that so many Republicans voted to raise taxes, even if on the nation’s very richest income earners.

“There was a time when Republicans used to have discipline on tax increases. Grover must be pulling his hair out,” the aide said, referring to Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax advocacy group that asks members of Congress to pledge not to raise taxes.

“I guess it’s Trump’s Republican Party,” the source observed, referring to President Trump’s more populist view of economic policy.

Trump wrote on social media last month that he would be “OK” with raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.

Trump broached the subject again in the Oval Office last month when asked about raising taxes on the very richest individuals to offset tax cuts for middle- and working-class families.

“I would love to do that, frankly,” Trump told reporters.

Republican Sens. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Bill Cassidy (La.), John Curtis (Utah), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Josh Hawley (Mo.), Jon Husted (Ohio), Cindy Hyde-Smith (Miss.), John Kennedy (La.), Roger Marshall (Kan.), McConnell, Jerry Moran (Kan.), Bernie Moreno (Ohio), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Roger Wicker (Miss.) and Todd Young (Ind.) voted to support the measure.

Collins also voted to waive the point-of-order objection against her proposal.