These GOP members who are contemplating raising taxes are playing with fire. Failure to act in a way that pleases the base will ensure they are the ones who get burned
Make no mistake about it: if Congress, particularly the United States Senate, fails to send a tax bill to the president's desk, it will imperil the congressional majority, do lasting damage to the Republican Party, and potentially threaten the American economy. The clock is ticking.
Donald Trump made tax reform a cornerstone of his presidential campaign, but he was not the first Republican to do so. Since Ronald Reagan enacted the largest tax cut in American history and reinvigorated the American economy, every GOP nominee for president has promised to provide tax relief. In 2000, George W. Bush promised tax cuts and in 2008, GOP nominee John McCain said that tax cuts were the center of his economic plan. McCain, according to the New York Times, "outlined a long list of tax cuts he favored in the speech, which was delivered on the deadline for filing taxes. He called once again for making the Bush tax cuts, which he voted against, permanent, and for cutting corporate taxes, phasing out the alternative minimum taxand doubling the value of exemptions for each dependent to $7,000 from $3,500. He also proposed giving people the option of using a simpler, shorter tax form."
