I spoke to Bloomberg‘s Ari Natter about the Senate tax bill’s surprising approach to energy policy:

“From an energy standpoint it’s an epic head fake,” said Liam Donovan, a tax lobbyist at Bracewell LLP. “I don’t think anybody in town would have guessed the Senate mark would be silent on energy, particularly after the waves that were made in the House.”

Read the full piece here.

To be clear, the surprise here was not that the Senate left the production tax credit (PTC) alone–clearly renewables have a stronger constituency within the Senate GOP conference than the house. The shocker was that the Senate failed to restore the orphaned tax credits that were left out of the 2015 phase-down deal. With the House proposal reinstating these credits, the Senate should have been a formality. Instead they chose to forego an energy title altogether.

I spoke to Politico‘s Bernie Becker for his Morning Tax tipsheet about the conspicuous lack of detail in the tax bill so far:

It’s understandable why Brady and his crew would want to wait until the last possible moment to let K Street know about the potential trade-offs in tax reform — i.e., which of their tax breaks might be on the blocks. “The goal here was to show enough cards to keep the broader business community at the table as long as possible, get a budget done, and hope at the other end that the totality of the bill (and the underlying political imperative) is compelling enough to overcome any parochial offenses that will inevitably show up the text,” Liam Donovan, a lobbyist at Policy Resolution Group, told Morning Tax.

Read the full piece here.