INTERVIEW-Democrats seek to cut U.S. budget deficits in half -Yarmuth

The chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Budget Committee on Tuesday said he and other senior Democrats aim to write a fiscal blueprint this year that would cut annual budget deficits by 50 percent in the next 10 years, possibly including tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy.

Representative John Yarmuth, in an interview with Reuters, said part of the effort could focus on raising the U.S. corporate tax rate to 26 percent or 27 percent, up from the 21 percent enacted through a broad Republican tax cut law in 2017.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan, Susan Cornwell, Howard Schneider, Jason Lange, Yasmeen Abutaleb and Amanda Becker; Editing by Andrea Ricci)