Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., right, with Sen. Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., left, and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., speaks about tax reform, Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Republican tax overhaul legislation (all times local): 
 
 3:15 p.m. 
 
 The White House is celebrating the Senate Budget Committee's passage of the Republican tax plan, which will advance the sweeping tax package to the full Senate. 
 
 Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement Tuesday that President Donald Trump is applauding the committee for "taking an important step toward passing historic tax relief and reform and clearing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act this afternoon." 
 
 She says the president "looks forward to providing tax cuts for hardworking Americans by the end of the year." 
 
 The committee voted 12-11 to advance the bill. GOP leaders hope to have the full Senate take it up later this week. 
 
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 3:05 p.m. 
 
 The Senate Budget Committee has advanced a sweeping tax package to the full Senate, handing GOP leaders a victory as they try to pass the nation's first tax overhaul in 31 years. 
 
 The committee voted 12 to 11 to advance the bill. Two committee Republicans had said they were considering voting against the measure. But after President Donald Trump personally lobbied Republican senators at the Capitol Tuesday, the committee passed the bill with little fanfare other than a few protesters who tried to disrupt the committee meeting. 
 
 GOP leaders hope to have the full Senate take up the bill later this week. The tax package blends a sharp reduction in top corporate and business tax rates with more modest relief for individuals. 
 
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 3:05 p.m. 
 
 Sen. Susan Collins of Maine says she has won support to amend the Senate's sweeping tax bill allow homeowners to deduct at least a portion of their local property taxes on their federal tax returns. 
 
 President Donald Trump attended a Senate Republican luncheon Tuesday in an effort to persuade senators to support the tax package. Afterward, Collins said Trump and other GOP leaders agreed to the property tax provision. 
 
 The current Senate bill completely repeals the state and local tax deduction, which helps reduce the tax bills of more than 43 million families. Collins said the Senate bill would be amended to allow homeowners to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes, which is similar to a provision in the House-passed bill. 
 
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 12:55 p.m. 
 
 A group of moderate Senate Democrats are asking Republicans to work with them to refashion their tax bill into legislation they say would truly help the middle class. 
 
 Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who led the group, tells Republicans: "We can get you to 70" votes on a bill. 
 
 Democrats weren't included in the crafting of the tax overhaul legislation, and they have attacked it as benefiting big corporations and the wealthy. 
 
 Several of the moderates had been actively courted by President Donald Trump on the tax overhaul in recent weeks, invited to meetings and dinners at the White House and trips with Trump on his plane. 
 
 Manchin, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota are from states easily carried by Trump in the 2016 election. They are up for re-election next year. 
 
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 10:30 a.m. 
 
 The House's chief tax-writer says ending the "Obamacare" requirement that everyone have health insurance — an element of the Senate bill — is a move the House also is likely to accept. 
 
 Rep. Kevin Brady, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, made his comments Tuesday as Senate Republican leaders pushed to pass their bill this week. It would eventually have to be reconciled with the tax measure recently passed by the House. 
 
 Brady has previously said that repealing the so-called individual mandate under the Obama health care law was politically risky. But he told the American Enterprise Institute that "the House has always been strongly supportive of eliminating that forced tax." 
 
 He said, "We're going to let the Senate process go forward, encourage the Senate to deliver a good pro-growth product." 
 
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 3:25 a.m. 
 
 Republicans are struggling to win over resistant GOP senators to a sweeping tax bill that President Donald Trump and their party have set as a vital political goal. 
 
 Trump, who has assured lawmakers there will be changes, is traveling to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to personally lobby Republican senators. Senate GOP leaders hope to pass the bill this week. 
 
 Anxious to pass a tax overhaul package by year's end with an eye to the 2018 elections, Trump and the GOP leaders scrambled Monday to make changes to the Senate version to woo the Republican holdouts. Republicans have only two votes to spare in the Senate, where they hold a 52-48 edge, and anticipate Vice President Mike Pence breaking a tie, if needed. ||||| CLOSE The House and the Senate have passed different versions of President Trump's tax reform bill so now it goes to a conference committee. Here's what that means. USA TODAY 
 
 In this April 6, 2017, file photo, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah speaks on Capitol Hill. (Photo: Cliff Owen, AP) 
 
 WASHINGTON — Republicans who control Congress said Wednesday they had struck a deal on legislation to overhaul the tax code, but they refused to release details amid reports tax rates would increase for corporations and drop for people with the highest incomes. 
 
 The legislation, which is still being finalized, would cut the top tax rate for the wealthy from 39.6% to 37%, lower the corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21% — an uptick from 20% that has been in earlier House and Senate plans — and allow homeowners to deduct interest only on the first $750,000 of a new mortgage, The Associated Press reported. 
 
 But Republicans refused to confirm details of the plan, and Democrats at a hearing convened to discuss it were told by the Republican chairman they could not see or even ask questions about the bill. 
 
 Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee confirmed an agreement had been reached between House and Senate leaders on a single bill that meshes competing tax plans that passed the House last month and the Senate in early December. 
 
 At Wednesday's meeting of a House-Senate conference committee — traditionally convened to work out differences between legislation passed by the two chambers — House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Texas, told Democrats they would see the final bill when it was finished at the end of the week. Brady said the members could express their views on it when both chambers vote on it next week. 
 
 President Donald Trump promised tax cuts were on the way in a White House speech. 
 
 “As a candidate, I promised we would pass a massive tax cut for the everyday, working American families who are the backbone and the heartbeat of our country,” Trump said. “Now we're just days away.” 
 
 Trump said Internal Revenue Service has concluded that if a tax bill is signed by Christmas, the tax withheld from workers’ paychecks could be adjusted as soon as February. 
 
 Trump told reporters before a lunch with some members of the conference committee he would accept a top corporate rate or 21% in the bill. During last year's campaign, Trump had said he wanted a 15% corporate rate, but 21% would provide more revenue to settle other differences in the House and Senate bills. 
 
 President Donald Trump, flanked by Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, left, and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, right, speaks during a bicameral meeting with lawmakers working on the tax cuts in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2017. (Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta, AP) 
 
 The bills passed in both chambers with only Republican votes have hundreds of differences, including the top and lower rates, how many tax brackets there are, and when changes take effect or phase out. Under a budget framework both houses passed in October, the tax changes cannot add more than $1.5 trillion to the deficit over the coming decade. 
 
 Trump and congressional Republicans made a tax bill their top priority after failing to reach agreement in attempts to overhaul health insurance and repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. 
 
 Democrats have voted unanimously against the tax bills. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N.Y., on Wednesday morning called for action on taxes to be delayed until the newly elected senator from Alabama, Democrat Doug Jones, can be sworn in. 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., holds a news conference to talk about the Democratic victory in the Alabama special election and to discuss the Republican tax bill, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, (Photo: J. Scott Applewhite, AP) 
 
 “Senate Democrats are calling on Mitch McConnell to hit pause on the tax bill,” Schumer said. 
 
 Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., tried to postpone the hearing of the conference committee Wednesday afternoon until Jones could arrive. 
 
 Brady told him the committee's rules did not allow him to make that motion, an answer Brady repeated often as increasingly agitated Democrats tried to find out if the committee would meet again to consider the final tax bill (it won't), or whether there would be a formal "score" of the economic impacts of the final bill (that is expected, but Brady wouldn't say so). 
 
 Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, said he sensed fear among the Republicans. 
 
 "It is the fear that if you don’t rush this through, with no questions, no amendments, no nothing, if the American people really find out what is in this bill, they will reject it and it will never be able to become law," Doggett said. 
 
 Republicans united behind the plan, saying that along with lower taxes on workers’ pay, the lower rates for businesses will generate a stronger economy with more jobs that pay higher salaries. 
 
 “We reject the idea that America cannot do any better than the status quo, which seems to be the attitude of our members across the aisle,” said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. 
 
 Democrats argue that the true cost of the tax plan will come in the future, when increased deficits – official scorekeepers said it would add at at least $1 trillion to the national debt, even after economic growth is taken into account – prompt Republicans try to make cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare, education, and the social safety net. 
 
 “In America today, the very wealthy are becoming much more wealthy while the middle class continues to shrink, and your solution is to give 62% of the benefits to the top 1%?” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. 
 
 Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, said Democrats should be happy Republicans were passing a bill as awful as the one they described, since they would be able to tell voters how the GOP hurt the country. 
 
 “If it doesn’t work, blame us,” Young said. 
 
 Sen. Bob Corker, a Republican from Tennessee who opposed the bill when it came up on Dec. 2, said passage was inevitable. 
 
 “There’s a locomotive,” Corker said. “It’s not stoppable.” 
 
 White House officials believe the tax plan’s benefits will put Democrats on the defensive in the midterm elections, especially those in states that Trump won in 2016. 
 
 “It will be very difficult for some Democratic senators particularly to go home after this passes and say, 'I had a chance to give you a lower tax bracket and expand the child care tax credit, double your standard deduction . . . But I said no,’” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. 
 
 Read more: 
 
 Top takeaways from Doug Jones' shocking victory over Roy Moore in Alabama 
 
 Who is Doug Jones? Civil Rights activist, attorney and University of Alabama alum 
 
 'Wait on God': Roy Moore still hasn't conceded 
 
 Contributing: Eliza Collins, David Jackson, Deirdre Shesgreen 
 
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– The Senate Budget Committee has advanced a sweeping tax package to the full Senate, handing GOP leaders a victory as they try to pass the nation's first tax overhaul in 31 years. The committee voted 12 to 11 to advance the bill. Two committee Republicans had said they were considering voting against the measure, but after President Trump personally lobbied Republican senators at the Capitol Tuesday, the committee passed the bill with little fanfare other than a few protesters who tried to disrupt the committee meeting, per the AP. GOP leaders hope to have the full Senate take up the bill later this week, though Politico reports that they were still scrambling to appease critics within their own ranks. The tax package blends a sharp reduction in top corporate and business tax rates with more modest relief for individuals. White House press chief Sarah Huckabee said Trump applauds the committee for "taking an important step toward passing historic tax relief and reform and clearing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act this afternoon." She added that the president "looks forward to providing tax cuts for hardworking Americans by the end of the year."