[Cabrera:] Republicans return from their Thanksgiving break in just a couple of days with big plans for their tax reform bill. It will be a make or break week as the Senate is hoping to hold a vote as early as Thursday. Let's get to chief business correspondent Christine Romans joining us to break down where we stand on this bill. And Christine, so we've had a little bit of time for this Senate plan to simmer just a little bit. What are your top takeaways?
[Christine Romans, Cnn Chief Business Correspondent:] Well, the most important thing here is there's a House bill and there will be a Senate bill, and then they have to reconcile them. So it's going to be a lot of horse trading. But what we know about kind of the basics of this Senate bill, and again, there are differences with the House, seven tax brackets, seven tax brackets, lower tax rates for everyone in those, a $2,000 child tax credit, that's a little richer than in the House bill. Now the Senate bill keeps the estate tax and doubles the exemption, and repeals something called the state and local tax deduction so that's pretty important. Also the alternative minimum tax. So these are the things that we're sort of chewing over and we'll see if it ends up in the final Senate bill.
[Cabrera:] So it sounds like, with the SALT tax in particular, that where you live matters.
[Romans:] Yes. If you live in one of these high tax states, this is going to be a deduction that you could lose here if, indeed, the final bill pulls out the state and local tax deduction. I'm talking Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, California. There are few other states where people really write off their local and their state taxes. The House version of the bill keeps about a $10,000 allowance for your property taxes, but in high tax states that would be a big difference in your tax bill.
[Cabrera:] Well, of course the Senate bill also has that Obamacare mandate repeal.
[Romans:] Absolutely.
[Cabrera:] Which is getting a lot of talk. We'll see if it stays as they work through a vote, but are there any losers? Because the Republicans say this is a win for everybody.
[Romans:] Well, look, it depends. I keep saying it depends. It depends on what it looks like in the end but the optics of this are that most of the benefits or a majority of the benefits go to rich people and companies. This is a corporate tax cut that has been packaged as a middle class tax cut which it really isn't, right? The strategy of the White House and Republicans has been that if you can give corporate tax relief to large and small businesses that's going to create jobs, grow the economy and create jobs, and that's how it's going to help the middle class. This week it will be interesting to see if that's a sell that they can give to Ron Johnson from Wisconsin and Susan Collins and other senators who are concerned about the optics that this looks like it's more for business and less for the average guy.
[Cabrera:] We only have like 20 seconds here, but a yes or no answer, I mean they saw this as going to for sure increase wages. Is there any evidence to back that up?
[Romans:] There's no guarantee. There's no there's no guarantee. Recent history, it has not worked, but it has worked in other cases when you've cut taxes simplifying the corporate tax rate is something that Democrats and Republicans agree needs to happen. Is this the vehicle? Is this the time? They think this has to be the time right now to do it.
[Cabrera:] All right. Christine Romans, thank you for simplifying it all for us. We are following breaking news out of Egypt. A horrific terror attack. 235 people now dead. The very latest next.