{"id":22709,"date":"2026-05-14T18:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ways-and-means-chief-says-hes-focused-on-bipartisanship\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T18:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T18:17:09","slug":"ways-and-means-chief-says-hes-focused-on-bipartisanship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/ways-and-means-chief-says-hes-focused-on-bipartisanship\/","title":{"rendered":"Ways and Means Chief says he’s focused on bipartisanship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith: Mr. Bipartisanship?<\/p>\n

Speaking at a conference Thursday sponsored by the Tax Council Policy Institute, the reliably partisan tax chieftain struck a conciliatory tone in saying he wants to spend the rest of this year working with Democrats on a number of issues.<\/p>\n

The Missouri Republican had kind words to say about his panel\u2019s ranking Democrat Rep. Richard Neal (\u201ceffective\u201d), Alabama Democratic tax writer Terri Sewell (\u201ca jewel\u201d) and especially Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not from the same cloth, but I love Senator Wyden \u2014 I really do,\u201d said Smith, adding they\u2019re supposed to have lunch next Monday. \u201cHe\u2019s a good, good man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith had little to say about the third reconciliation package House Republicans hope to put together and, at one point, called it \u201creconciliation 10.0 or whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n

He emphasized instead areas where he said he could work with Democrats.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do things on health care, trade and tax from a bipartisan perspective, and I intend to do that in the next few months,\u201d he told conference attendees. <\/p>\n

\u201cEverything that we move forward on Ways and Means needs to be bipartisan, because I want to legislate,” Smith continued. “I don\u2019t want to just like pass things just to pass things. I want them to become law.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a notable shift for Smith, who was one of the architects behind Republicans\u2019 hyperpartisan tax cuts pushed into law last year, and comes even as his House colleagues still hope to pass yet another party-line reconciliation bill later this summer, in addition to the one now pending in the Senate that’s focused on funding immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n

Smith noted that he had just arrived from a closed-door meeting with Democratic tax writers to discuss cryptocurrency tax issues. He\u2019s spent months working on a still-unreleased plan to revise the tax code to account for the rise of digital assets, though he\u2019s said he won\u2019t move it without support from Democrats. <\/p>\n

Smith has also been pushing to move a package of uncontroversial measures<\/a> aimed at improving tax administration. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith: Mr. Bipartisanship? Speaking at a conference Thursday sponsored by the Tax Council Policy Institute, the reliably partisan tax chieftain struck a conciliatory tone in saying he wants to spend the rest of this year working with Democrats on a number of issues. The Missouri Republican had kind […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}