During comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump said Manchin “sold West Virginia out” in compliance with the Inflation Reduction Act, a reconciliation deal.
The United States currently has a 21% corporate tax rate, which it assesses based on companies’ tax returns. The new proposal would evaluate a minimum 15% tax on the adjusted financial statement income of corporations: book income.
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The idea isn’t new; in fact, it has been experimented with. A common refrain among the Democrats is that some corporations can slide by paying little or no effective taxes. Similar complaints four decades ago helped give rise to the Business Untaxed Reported Profits adjustment in the 1986 Tax Reform Act.
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“I don’t believe they can stand for that,” Trump said.
Manchin recently announced an understanding on the bill, a scaled-back alternative to "Build Back Better," a total social spending and green energy bill that Manchin sunk last year when he objected to its price tag and raised concerns over inflation.
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Manchin and Schumer worked to get Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) to vote for the bill, who also did not back the previous version, so they could pass the bill unilaterally through the evenly divided chamber with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. She signed off earlier this week, and the Senate remained in Washington after its August recess was scheduled to begin to pass it.
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Trump said, "if this deal passes, they will both lose their next election.”
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On the same day as Trump’s remarks, the Senate considered a procedural motion to advance the bill.
“And guess what, they're voting on it now,” Trump said. “So maybe the speech can stop them because when Manchin hears me say he’s gonna lose, I’ll go down to West Virginia and campaign against him.”
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However, the procedural action was passed during the speech, and the Senate is eventually expected to pass the bill.
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Elsewhere in his speech, Trump teased a third bid for the White House, theorized about enforcing the death penalty for drug dealers to decrease addiction rates, and pointed out the Republican congressional and gubernatorial candidates he had endorsed in the audience.
He also brought Riley Gaines, a former SEC champion swimmer, on stage as he discussed keeping preventing transgender athletes from competing in sports on teams opposite their biological sex.