Steve Daines becomes second U.S. GOP senator to oppose Senate tax bill

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) -- Steve Daines, a Republican senator from the northeastern U.S. state of Montana, announced Monday that he opposes the tax bill in its current form, turning him into the second GOP senator publicly against the bill.

"I want to see changes to the tax cut bill that ensure main street businesses are not put at a competitive disadvantage against large corporations," Daines said in a statement.

"Before I can support this bill, this improvement needs to be made," he said, adding he will continue working with other Senators to find a solution.

GOP Senator of Wisconsin Ron Johnson has already said he opposes the bill.

The two senators both said that the current bill unfairly benefits corporations more than other types of businesses.

Under the Senate tax bill, the corporate tax rate would be cut down to 20 percent from the current 35 percent. While the bill would also provide a 17.4-percentage-point deduction of earnings for pass-through businesses such as limited liability companies, those businesses would still have higher effective tax rates than corporations.

Senate Republicans are expected to hold a vote on the tax bill later this week. While Republicans have a majority of 52 seats in the Senate, they can only afford to lose two votes of GOP senators to pass the tax bill without any support from Democrats.

Democrats in the upper chamber have repeatedly criticized that the tax bill is geared toward helping large companies and the wealthy rather than the middle class.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office also said Sunday in a report that the Senate tax bill would negatively impact lower-income Americans, who earn less than 30,000 U.S. dollars a year by 2019, less than 40,000 dollars a year by 2021, and less than 75,000 dollars a year by 2027.

Even though the Senate is able to pass its own tax bill, there are significant differences between the Senate legislation and the House version, which was passed earlier this month. It's still a long way ahead for lawmakers to come to agreement on a final version of the tax bill. Enditem