
The stealth Senate dealmaker who could deliver Trump's tax cuts
Some of the most critical components of President Donald Trump's agenda are in the hands of a soft-spoken senator from Idaho who behind closed doors is one of Capitol Hill's most calculating dealmakers.
Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo is rushing to finalize his panel's portion of his party's massive legislative centerpiece. He could begin briefing colleagues on bill text as soon as Monday, according to a person granted anonymity to share an evolving schedule —while three people aware of the state of negotiations say a full tax package may not be ready for release until early next week.
That package needs to unite 51 Republicans in the Senate without alienating more than three GOP members of the House. The fate of vast Republican tax cuts enacted in 2017, and set to expire at the end of this year, hangs in the balance.
In interviews throughout the past several weeks in the halls of the Senate, as he shuffled between meetings and votes flanked by trusted advisers, Crapo played his cards close to his vest.
Asked about how he planned to make sure a trio of expiring business tax cuts are made permanent, he replied, 'I'm just not going to comment.'
On whether the Senate would make tweaks to controversial House Medicaid language: 'We're working that right now. I'm not going to get into the details.'
On how negotiations were going over whether to lower the House agreement to increase the cap on the state-and-local-tax deduction to $40,000: 'We're looking at the entire bill.'
Crapo is known for his spare words, but also for his history of landing deals — and squashing ones he doesn't like, such as last year when he tanked a bipartisan tax bill negotiated by then-Finance Chair Ron Wyden and the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, Jason Smith. At the same time, longtime colleagues and aides say Crapo can sometimes play the role of committee consensus-builder to his detriment — and he may have to put that tendency aside as the clock ticks down to the GOP's self-imposed July 4 deadline to send Trump his 'big, beautiful bill.'
The question is now whether Crapo can help broker an agreement at this political moment when he has never presided over a policy battle with such high stakes.
'Mike Crapo is probably one of the three most well-respected members of the Republican caucus. People trust him. He listens. He tells you the truth. He tries to be inclusive, sometimes to a fault,' said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) in an interview. 'He's quiet. He's really, really smart.'
People who have worked closely with Crapo say he likes to slowly build agreement among his committee members, has seemingly infinite patience to work out issues and most likely won't take a position with Senate leadership until he feels like all of his fellow panel Republicans are on board.
'Crapo is a very thoughtful and deliberate lawmaker who has strong views on tax policy himself, but also who cares about what his committee members want,' said Joe Boddicker, a former tax counsel for Senate Finance Republicans under Crapo, now of the law firm Alston & Bird. 'He will try to incorporate the feedback from them, and he puts a high premium on that feedback … so it'll be a group product, one that reflects the viewpoints of the committee membership.'
He has previously walked political tightropes to pull off difficult legislative wins. Among the most notable was in 2018, when, as chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Crapo crafted a rare bipartisan deal with red-state Democrats to loosen Dodd-Frank regulations on banks — the most significant overhaul of the rules since they were first created after the 2008 financial crisis.
'[He] puts the time in on it. He's low-key, but he is a connector, a facilitator,' said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who worked closely with Crapo on the banking overhaul. 'He doesn't need the spotlight, but he is very, very effective.'
But Crapo is getting an earful from his members right now about what the tax portion of the GOP megabill should look like. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) wants to make the 'no tax on tips' proposal — a Trump campaign promise — more fair for blue-collar workers in certain industries. Meanwhile, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to scale back a tier of new endowment taxes on private universities, a favorite proposal from House Ways and Means Republicans.
Crapo is fielding a host of concerns from an ideologically diverse group of Senate Republicans, from moderate Susan Collins of Maine to conservative Josh Hawley of Missouri, who say they won't vote for a bill that could result in people losing Medicaid coverage.
And then there's Sen. Ron Johnson, a Finance member who has warned he could vote against the megabill if Republicans don't commit to massive reductions in spending.
At the same time, Crapo has shown in the past he's not afraid to stand up for his own interests. He surprised his House counterparts last year when he quietly killed the bipartisan tax deal crafted by Smith and Wyden. He opposed many of the policies, including an expansion of the Child Tax Credit. But while he didn't know then how the 2024 elections would shake out, stymying that deal also left the door open for the scenario in which Crapo now finds himself: able to run point on a more sweeping, and wholly partisan, tax overhaul exercise under a GOP governing trifecta.
The fallout, however, also soured the relationship between Crapo and Smith. Yet the two men have found a new way to work closely together over the last few months to deliver Trump's biggest legislative priorities through the filibuster-skirting budget reconciliation process.
'I think part of the problem is that Wyden and Smith got together and Crapo didn't feel like he was a full partner,' said Finance Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas regarding the prior episode.
Cornyn added that the current political conditions have necessitated an accord between the two lawmakers.
They'll have to work together. Their two committees differ on the questions of business tax permanence — which would cost around half a trillion dollars to implement — and how high to cap the SALT deduction — which all Finance Republics want lowered. And there's continued disagreement over using an accounting tactic to essentially paper over around $3.8 trillion of extensions of Trump's tax cuts.
Smith says he's in favor of the maneuver, but House hard-liners are extremely skeptical of the idea. Senate Republicans, including Crapo, want to keep it in place.
'We've been communicating very closely so we each know what the other is thinking,' 74-year-old Crapo, who has served in the Senate for more than three decades, said in an interview of his working relationship now with 44-year-old Smith, who was elected to the House in 2013 and has a reputation for being more outwardly pugnacious.
'We each know what the other's politics are in their caucus,' Crapo continued, 'and we're trying to keep ourselves in a situation where there are as few differences as possible.'
A spokesperson for Smith did not respond to a request for comment about the House member's rapport with the senator.
The partnership will come in handy as Crapo faces enormous pressure from other members of House GOP leadership, who are urging the Senate not to make so many changes to the House-passed bill that it will slow down the bill's final passage — if not derail the effort altogether.
'Mike Crapo is a brilliant senator and he's instrumental on the tax stuff and everything else. You got to respect his opinion. But at the end of the day, I hope they leave it right where it's at,' said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) in an interview last week.
Crapo, meanwhile, has expressed quiet confidence he will deliver a viable product — even as he deals with the competing demands of House leaders like Emmer, his fellow Finance Republicans and even the Senate parliamentarian, whose rulings could complicate his efforts.
Asked recently about an anticipated parliamentary ruling on the accounting tactic, he managed to sum up his whole approach: 'I never declare victory until the game is over.'
Jordain Carney and Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump aides want Texas to redraw its congressional maps to boost the GOP. What would that mean?
This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas' free newsletters here. Republicans representing Texas in Congress are considering this week whether to push their state Legislature to take the unusual step of redrawing district lines to shore up the GOP's advantage in the U.S. House. But the contours of the plan, including whether Gov. Greg Abbott would call a special session of the Legislature to redraw the maps, remain largely uncertain. The idea is being driven by President Donald Trump's political advisers, who want to draw up new maps that would give Republicans a better chance to flip seats currently held by Democrats, according to two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. That proposal, which would involve shifting GOP voters from safely red districts into neighboring blue ones, is aimed at safeguarding Republicans' thin majority in Congress, where they control the lower chamber, 220-212. The redistricting proposal, and the Trump team's role in pushing it, was first reported by The New York Times Monday. Without a Republican majority in Congress, Trump's legislative agenda would likely stall, and the president could face investigations from newly empowered Democratic committee chairs intent on scrutinizing the White House. Here's what we know about the plan so far: On Capitol Hill, members of the Texas GOP delegation huddled Monday night to discuss the prospect of reshaping their districts. Most of the 25-member group expressed reluctance about the idea, citing concerns about jeopardizing their districts in next year's midterms if the new maps overextended the GOP's advantage, according to the two GOP aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private deliberations. Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Lubbock, was skeptical of the idea. 'We just recently worked on the new maps,' Arrington told The Texas Tribune. To reopen the process, he said, 'there'd have to be a significant benefit to our state.' The delegation has yet to be presented with mockups of new maps, two aides said. Each state's political maps must be redrawn once a decade, after each round of the U.S. census, to account for population growth and ensure every congressional and legislative district has roughly the same number of people. Texas lawmakers last overhauled their district lines in 2021. There's no federal law that prohibits states from redrawing district maps midcycle, said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University and a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's civil rights division. Laws around the timing to redraw congressional and state district maps vary by state. In Texas, the state constitution doesn't specify timing, so the redrawing of maps is left to the discretion of the governor and the Legislature. Lawmakers gaveled out of their 140-day regular session last week, meaning they would need to be called back for a special session to change the state's political maps. Abbott has the sole authority to order overtime sessions and decide what lawmakers are allowed to consider. A trial is underway in El Paso in a long-running challenge to the state legislative and congressional district maps Texas drew after the 2020 U.S. Census. If Texas redraws its congressional maps, state officials would then ask the court to toss the claims challenging those districts 'that no longer exist,' Levitt said. The portion of the case over the state legislative district maps would continue. If the judge agrees, then both parties would have to file new legal claims for the updated maps. It isn't clear how much maps could change, but voters could find themselves in new districts, and Levitt said redrawing the lines in the middle of the redistricting cycle is a bad idea. 'If the people of Texas think that their representatives have done a bad job, then when the [district] lines change, they're not voting on those representatives anymore,' Levitt said. 'New people are voting on those representatives.' The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, Democrats' national arm for contesting state GOP mapmaking, said the proposal to expand Republicans' stronghold in Texas was 'yet another example of Trump trying to suppress votes in order to hold onto power.' 'Texas's congressional map is already being sued for violating the Voting Rights Act because it diminishes the voting power of the state's fast-growing Latino population,' John Bisognano, president of the NDRC said. 'To draw an even more extreme gerrymander would only assure that the barrage of legal challenges against Texas will continue.' When Republicans in charge of the Legislature redrew the district lines after the 2020 census, they focused on reinforcing their political support in districts already controlled by the GOP. This redistricting proposal would likely take a different approach. As things stand, Republicans hold 25 of the state's 38 congressional seats. Democrats hold 12 seats and are expected to regain control of Texas' one vacant seat in a special election this fall. Most of Texas' GOP-controlled districts lean heavily Republican: In last year's election, 24 of those 25 seats were carried by a Republican victor who received at least 60% of the vote or ran unopposed. The exception was U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, R-Edinburg, who captured 57% of the vote and won by a comfortable 14-point margin. With little competition to speak of, The Times reported, Trump's political advisers believe at least some of those districts could bear the loss of GOP voters who would be reshuffled into neighboring, Democratic-held districts — giving Republican hopefuls a better chance to flip those seats from blue to red. The party in control of the White House frequently loses seats during midterm cycles, and Trump's team is likely looking to offset potential GOP losses in other states and improve the odds of holding on to a narrow House majority. Incumbent Republicans, though, don't love the idea of sacrificing a comfortable race in a safe district for the possibility of picking up a few seats, according to GOP aides. In 2003, after Texas Republicans initially left it up to the courts to draw new lines following the 2000 census, then-U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a Sugar Land Republican, embarked instead on a bold course of action to consolidate GOP power in the state. He, along with his Republican allies, redrew the lines as the opening salvo to a multistate redistricting plan aimed at accumulating power for his party in states across the country. Enraged by the power play, Democrats fled the state, depriving the Texas House of the quorum it needed to function. The rebels eventually relented under threat of arrest, a rare power in the Texas Constitution used to compel absent members back to return to Austin when the Legislature is in session. The lines were then redrawn, cementing the GOP majority the delegation has enjoyed in Washington for the past two decades. However, what's at play this time is different than in the early 2000s, when Republicans had a newfound majority in the Legislature and had a number of vulnerable Democratic incumbents they could pick off. Now, Republicans have been entrenched in the majority for decades and will have to answer the question of whether there's really more to gain, said Kareem Crayton, the vice president of the Brennan Center for Justice's Washington office. 'That's the tradeoff. You can do that too much so that you actually make them so competitive that the other side wins,' Crayton said. 'That's always a danger.' Texas Republicans are planning to reconvene Thursday to continue discussing the plan, according to Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, and Rep. Wesley Hunt, R-Houston, who said they will attend the meeting. Members of Trump's political team are also expected to attend, according to Hunt and two GOP congressional aides familiar with the matter. Natalia Contreras is a reporter for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. She's based in Corpus Christi. Contact Natalia at ncontreras@ Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here. Big news: 20 more speakers join the TribFest lineup! New additions include Margaret Spellings, former U.S. secretary of education and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center; Michael Curry, former presiding bishop and primate of The Episcopal Church; Beto O'Rourke, former U.S. Representative, D-El Paso; Joe Lonsdale, entrepreneur, founder and managing partner at 8VC; and Katie Phang, journalist and trial lawyer. Get tickets. TribFest 2025 is presented by JPMorganChase.


Washington Post
31 minutes ago
- Washington Post
Permitless concealed carry in North Carolina faces uphill battle after some GOP pushback
RALEIGH, N.C. — A bill to let adults carry concealed handguns without a permit cleared the North Carolina legislature on Wednesday, however the path to joining the majority of U.S. states with similar laws remains uncertain. The GOP-backed legislation faces a likely veto from Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, as well as pushback from a handful of Republicans who voted against the legislation in the state House. House Speaker Destin Hall acknowledged those concerns after Wednesday's vote.
Yahoo
33 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they 'went too far'
Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they 'went too far' Elon Musk, the world's richest person and Donald Trump's former advisor, says he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president (Kevin Dietsch) (Kevin Dietsch/GETTY IMAGESvia AFP) Elon Musk, the world's richest person and Donald Trump's former advisor, said Wednesday he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president, after the pair's public falling-out last week. "I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far," Musk wrote on his social media platform X, in a message that was received favorably by the White House. Musk's expression of regret came just days after Trump threatened the tech billionaire with "serious consequences" if he sought to punish Republicans who vote for a controversial spending bill. Their blistering break-up -- largely carried out on social media before a riveted public since Thursday last week -- was ignited by Musk's harsh criticism of Trump's so-called "big, beautiful" spending bill, which is currently before Congress. ADVERTISEMENT Some lawmakers who were against the bill had called on Musk -- one of the Republican Party's biggest financial backers in last year's presidential election -- to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the legislation. "He'll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that," Trump, who also branded Musk "disrespectful," told NBC News on Saturday, without specifying what those consequences would be. Trump also said he had "no" desire to repair his relationship with the South African-born Tesla and SpaceX chief, and that he has "no intention of speaking to him." But after Musk's expression of regret, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump was "appreciative," adding that "no efforts" had been made on a threat by Trump to end some of Musk's government contracts. "The president acknowledged the statement that Elon put out this morning, and he is appreciative of it," Leavitt said. ADVERTISEMENT According to the New York Times, Musk's message followed a phone call to Trump late on Monday night. Vice President JD Vance and Chief of Staff Susan Wiles had also been working with Musk on how to broker a truce with Trump, the report said. - 'Wish him well' - In his post on Wednesday, Musk did not specify which of his criticisms of Trump had gone "too far." The former allies had seemed to have cut ties amicably about two weeks ago, with Trump giving Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But their relationship cracked within days, with Musk describing the spending bill as an "abomination" that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump's second term in office. Trump hit back at Musk's comments in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington stunned. ADVERTISEMENT Trump later said on his Truth Social platform that cutting billions of dollars in subsidies and contracts to Musk's companies would be the "easiest way" to save the US government money. US media have put the value of the contracts at $18 billion. With real political and economic risks to their falling out, both already appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, with Trump telling reporters "I just wish him well," and Musk responding on X: "Likewise." Trump had spoken to NBC on Saturday after Musk deleted one of the explosive allegations he had made during their fallout, linking the president with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was accused of sex trafficking. bur-arp/aha