The White House wouldn’t oppose removing from theSenate tax plan a controversial provision torepeal the individual health-care mandate of theAffordable Care Act, budget director Mick Mulvaney said, a movethat could help secure the vote of key Republicans.

The provision could be dropped if it becomes “an impediment,”Mulvaney, head of the Office of Management and Budget, said onCNN’s “State of the Union."

“If we can repeal part of Obamacare as part of a tax bill andhave a tax bill that is still a good tax bill that can pass, that’sgreat,” he said. “If it becomes an impediment to getting the besttax bill we can, then we’re OK with taking it out.”

On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mulvaney said the White House “wouldlove to see Obamacare taken apart all at once, bit by bit, howeverwe can do it,” but that if the mandate repeal “needs to come out inorder for that good tax bill to pass, we can live with that aswell.”

White House legislative director Marc Short said theadministration approves of the Senate’s move to include the repealof the individual mandate in its bill because it’s a tax thatpredominately affects those earning $50,000 a year or less.

“The White House is very comfortable with the House bill,” Shortsaid on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday. “We also, though, believe theindividual mandate is a tax, and it is harming middle-incomefamilies the most. So we like the fact that the Senate has includedit in its bill.”

Mulvaney made three appearances on Sunday political talk shows.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Short alsospoke, reflecting the Trump administration’s full-bore attemptto sell the Republican tax plans now working their way throughCongress.

No ‘bargaining chip’

Mnuchin said the individual mandate repeal hadn’t been added tothe Senate bill as a bargaining chip that could be removed later ifit risked costing the votes of key Republican senators such asSusan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

“This isn’t a bargaining chip,” Mnuchin said on “FoxNews Sunday.” “Right now our objective is to keep it in,” he said,adding that “we’re going to work with the Senate as we go throughthis.”

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The individual mandate, a key element of the Affordable CareAct, requires most Americas to obtain health insurance or pay afine. Repealing it in the Senate plan would give Republicans morerevenue to work with in their tax-cutting efforts because fewerpeople would buy insurance and receive federal subsidies to helppay for their coverage.

If no Democrats vote for the Senate bill, Republicans can affordto lose only two votes and still pass it under Senate rules.

‘Needs work’

Collins said Sunday on ABC that the bill passed by the SenateFinance Committee “needs work” when it comes to the Senatefloor, and that the decision to include the individual mandaterepeal was a mistake. Asked if she can vote for the measure aswritten, she said “I haven’t reached that conclusion yet, because Ithink there are going to be further changes.”

Collins said she’s concerned about premiums increasing if themandate is removed and isn’t mitigated by legislation to stabilizeObamacare’s health-insurance exchanges.

“It’s a problem for me if it is not mitigated,” Collins said.She said she also wants to keep the top individual income-tax rateat the current 39.6 percent and that the state and local taxdeduction, targeted for elimination in the Senate bill, should becontinued.

Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas said on Fox’s “Sunday MorningFutures” that the mandate should be eliminated because lower-incomepeople are still getting subsidies to reduce their premiums.

“The vast majority of people on the Obamacare exchanges aregetting subsidies,” Cotton said. “So if their premiums do go up,they’re still going to get higher subsidies.”

Tight schedule

House Republicans passed their plan -- which didn’t include theindividual mandate repeal -- on Thursday afternoon. Later thatnight their colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee approveda far different version that postponesdifficult questions as lawmakers rush to refashion much of the U.S.economy on the tight schedule demanded by President DonaldTrump.

Republican leaders plan to bring the tax bill to the Senatefloor for consideration when they return from the Thanksgivingrecess.

Some Republican senators have expressed concern about the plan.One, Senator Ron Johnson, has said he can’t support the proposal aswritten because of its treatment of taxes for small businesses forso-called pass-through businesses -- and Mulvaney said theWisconsin lawmaker has a point.

Pass-through businesses include partnerships, limited liabilitycompanies and “S corporations” -- businesses that are closely heldand vary in size and purpose from mom-and-pop convenience stores tonationwide retailers or large-scale manufacturers. They alsoinclude law firms, accounting firms and investment firms.

“Senator Johnson has sort of honed in one thing that we knew wassort of the last big substantive piece of the puzzle, and that’show do you deal with these pass-through entities, S-corporations,LLCs, and partnerships,” Mulvaney said on CBS.

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Business taxes

“They’re taxed differently than C-corporations. And they’retaxed at the individual level. So, when you start to lower thecorporate tax rate, it’s arguably putting S-corporations at adisadvantage. And that needs to be worked out,” he said.

If passed, lawmakers from the House and Senate would attempt tocompromise on significant differences between their two versions onthe treatment of deductions and other elements, with the goal ofhaving a final bill to Trump by year-end.

Senator Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, said on NBC’s “Meetthe Press” that the two plans are “very reconcilable.”

The House bill, passed on a party-line vote, would lower thecorporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, shrink the numberof individual tax brackets to four from seven, and scrap manypopular tax breaks and deductions. Several Republicans fromdistricts in high-tax states, including New York and New Jersey,voted against the plan.

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Deficit impact

Critics say both plans would drive up the federal budgetdeficit, despite assertions from the White House and manyRepublican lawmakers that tax cuts would pay for themselves overtime by increasing economic growth. Some independent studiesdispute that, prompting critics of the tax plans to say they’llsoon spur urgent calls for spending cuts.

“It’s just not economically rational” to say that the planswould increase the federal deficit, Kevin Hassett, thechairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said atthe daily White House briefing on Friday.

The conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, a Washington policygroup, said earlier this month that the House’s tax bill would cost$1.98 trillion over a decade compared with current law. About halfof that may be offset by higher growth, the foundationestimated.

Meanwhile, the Penn Wharton Budget Model at the University ofPennsylvania found that, after accounting for larger economiceffects, the House bill would “reduce revenues between $1.5trillion and $1.7 trillion” over 10 years. The Senate plan wouldreduce revenue by $1.4 trillion to $1.7 trillion, the modelfound.

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