Trump Abandons Campaign Promise To Abolish SALT Cap, Telling Blue State Republicans To Get in Line on Budget Bill

In a last-minute push to get his “one big beautiful bill” through the House, President Trump is throwing New York Republicans under the bus. He says they should accept the speaker’s offer to raise the State and Local Tax deduction cap, even though he campaigned on abolishing the cap altogether last year. Blue state Republicans, mostly from New York, have been pushing Speaker Johnson hard to raise the SALT deduction cap from the current $10,000 level. They have already rejected Mr. Johnson’s past offers to lift the cap to $30,000 or $40,000. The group has declined to say if it has a specific number in mind as negotiations with leadership are ongoing. Leaving a meeting with Mr. Trump on Capitol Hill Tuesday, two Republicans from the Empire State, Congressmen Nick LaLota and Mike Lawler, confirmed they were still not on board despite the president’s demand that they give up on their negotiations and fall in line. The president had told them to just take what they’ve already gotten and call it a win. “The issue of SALT is one of the biggest issues impacting my district. It’s the reason I won,” Mr. Lawler told reporters after the meeting. “We will continue the dialogue with leadership, but as it stands right now, I do not support the bill.”Mr. Trump’s decision to tell lawmakers to back down from their SALT demands is a major campaign promise reversal that is sure to enrage other blue state Republicans. Two other lawmakers, Congressman Tom Kean of New Jersey and Congresswoman Young Kim of California, say they also cannot support the bill in its current form. At a Long Island rally last year, Mr. Trump promised to abolish the cap altogether, even though he was the one who put the limit on the deduction in the first place. “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU HAVE TO LOSE? VOTE FOR TRUMP! I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” the president wrote on Truth Social ahead of his rally in New York. “I’ll work with the Democrat Governor and Mayor, and make sure the funding is there to bring New York State back to levels it hasn’t seen for 50 years.”After the meeting with House Republicans on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said the group needed to get together and just pass the bill, no matter what it takes. “We have unbelievable unity,” Mr. Trump said. “I think this was a tremendous session.”Beyond the blue state lawmakers, conservatives and deficit hawks also came away from the session with Mr. Trump unimpressed. The chairman of the Freedom Caucus, Congressman Andy Harris, said he was still opposed to the bill because the spending levels are now projected to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in the coming years. “We’re still a long ways away but we can get there — maybe not by tomorrow,” Mr. Harris said. The speaker has planned to hold a floor vote on the “one big beautiful bill” on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson wants to get the legislation to the Senate before the week-long Memorial Day recess, which begins on Thursday. Congress is not due to return until early June.

Trump Abandons Campaign Promise To Abolish SALT Cap, Telling Blue State Republicans To Get in Line on Budget Bill

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