Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, and Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, organized the drafting of the letter, which lays out their priorities. Three Democratic senators who are up for re-election next year Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota did not sign the letter. They could be ripe targets for Republicans looking for Democrats to get on board with their tax plan.

Despite the outreach, bipartisanship will not come easy.

On taxes, Democrats tend to favor raising taxes on the rich to pay for cuts that would reduce tax rates for middle-income families. The parties are in closer agreement on changes to the corporate tax system, but Democrats argue that the cuts Republicans are proposing are far too deep.

In the conditions laid out in their letter, the Democrats insisted that changes to tax laws not increase the tax burden on the middle class and that the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers not see their tax bills shrink.

They also insisted that Republicans return to regular order and not try to push a tax bill through Congress using budget reconciliation rules that require only a simple majority in the Senate.

Finally, they want a rewrite of the tax code that does not add to the deficit and is not paid for with cuts to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

For much of this year, Democrats have criticized the proposed tax policies of Republicans as giveaways to the rich. It was clear on Tuesday that Republicans are not eager to let Democrats meddle with their plans for a tax overhaul, even if they would welcome a few of their votes.

We will need to use reconciliation because we have been informed by the majority of the Democrats in a letter I just received today that most of the principles that would get the country growing again, theyre not interested in addressing, Mr. McConnell said, leaving the option for Democrats to support a Republican-led tax plan. So I dont think this is going to be 1986 when you had a bipartisan effort to scrub the code.

For its part, the Trump administration has been more vocal this week about the importance of attracting some Democrats to its tax plan. At a gathering on Monday of conservative activists sponsored by Americans for Prosperity, the political network of the Koch brothers, Marc Short, the White House legislative affairs director, made the case that Democrats need to be brought into the fold. The Republican majority in the Senate, he said, was too slim for party members to count only on one another.

We ask your help, actually, reaching out to Democrats as well, Mr. Short said, noting the ones who are coming up for re-election. If they hear from their constituents that they need tax reform, thats going to be a very strong selling point.

It remains unclear how enthusiastic Democrats really would be to make compromises with Republicans that would allow Mr. Trump to score a major legislative victory. In the battle over the Affordable Care Act, even potentially vulnerable Democratic senators from states that the president won last year held firm in their opposition to the repeal of the health care law.

Relegated to the minority, however, Democrats are trying to stake out the moral high ground. Mr. Schumer warned on Tuesday that Republicans could suffer the same fate on taxes that they did on health care if they continue to operate alone.

Theres real potential for bipartisan support on tax reform, but I think our Republican colleagues, dictated by the Koch brothers hard right wing of their party, is running away from it, Mr. Schumer said. They say tax reform is hard, and it is. But its a lot harder if Republicans try to do it all by themselves.

Cooperation between the parties will be necessary for Congress to deal with more immediately pressing legislative priorities. The debt ceiling must be lifted by the end of September, and Mr. Schumer, Mr. McConnell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin huddled on Tuesday morning to discuss the way forward.

Although Mr. Mnuchin and Democrats want a clean lift of the statutory borrowing limit, many Republicans are pushing for spending cuts or changes to budget process to be linked to any legislation.

No breakthrough was made on that issue.

A version of this article appears in print on August 2, 2017, on Page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Make Overture To G.O.P. on Tax Overhaul.

Go here to read the rest:

After Health Care Victory, Senate Democrats Seek Compromise on Tax Plan - New York Times