Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says tax reform by August is 'not realistic'

Steven Mnuchin faces confirmation vote for Treasury secretary
(Image credit: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin admitted Monday that getting a tax reform bill to President Trump's desk by August is "not realistic." Mnuchin himself originally set the deadline in late February, just a week after he was sworn in to lead the Treasury Department.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Mnuchin said the late summer deadline was "highly aggressive to not realistic at this point," citing the failed health-care negotiations last month as part of the reason for the delay. Instead, the Treasury chief said he expected a tax overhaul by the end of 2017.

In an interview with Fox News that aired last week, Trump also seemed to waffle on the ambitious timeline. In a discussion about health-care reform, the president said, "I don't want to put deadlines. Health care is gonna happen at some point. Now, if it doesn't happen fast enough, I'm gonna start taxes. Tax reform and tax cuts are better if I do health care first." Trump backed the Republican-led American Health Care Act, which failed last month.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The White House initially signaled it would move on to tax reform even without a health-care overhaul, but in recent weeks efforts have been taken to restart failed health-care talks. Significant tax reform has not been completed since 1986.

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Kimberly Alters

Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.