Paul Ryan will promise to take advantage of a 'once-in-a-generation moment' and pass tax reform this year

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June 20, 2017 2:56 PM

"We are going to get this done in 2017. We need to get this done in 2017," House Speaker Paul Ryan will say Tuesday in a speech to manufacturers on taxes.

In a speech Tuesday, Paul Ryan plans to advocate cutting taxes in 2017.

House Speaker Paul Ryan will promise a GOP overhaul of the US tax system by the end of the year during a speech to the National Association of Manufacturers on Tuesday.

"We are going to get this done in 2017. We need to get this done in 2017. We cannot let this once-in-a-generation moment slip," Ryan will say, according to excerpts of the speech provided to Business Insider.

An aide for Ryan told Business Insider that the speech would kick off a "sales pitch" for tax reform but would "not litigate the issues currently being resolved between the House, Senate, and administration."

Ryan's planned remarks, however, do touch on the idea of the border adjustment tax, which he favors. The BAT would set up an end-point consumption tax that would effectively tax imports and encourage exports. Ryan appears to mention the end goal of the idea in the speech.

"We are actually unique in the world in the way we discourage capital from coming back to America and how we incentivize off-shoring jobs," Ryan will say, according to the prepared remarks. "This is not the kind of exceptionalism we should aspire to ... We must think differently, so that once again we make things here and export them around the world."

The aide for Ryan said that while Ryan would encourage changing the code to discourage companies from moving abroad, "the particular mechanism must be sorted out with the administration."

Many members of the White House economic team, from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to the National Economic Council's director, Gary Cohn, have expressed skepticism over the BAT.

These issues and more will need to be ironed out to get the tax package completed by the end of the year. Also in the way are necessary measures like funding the government before the end of September and raising the debt ceiling. Other agenda items, most notably the overhaul of the healthcare system, also may hold up the progress, as might the cloud of the investigation into ties between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia.

But Ryan's speech will be an upbeat push to carrying out tax cuts.

"Transformational tax reform can be done, and we are moving forward," the speech will say. "Full speed ahead."

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