House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, on Wednesday criticized former President Trump's reversal of a popular tax cut, noting that Republicans had put the same caps on state and local tax deductions that Trump now says he wants to eliminate.
“I find it interesting that Donald Trump and the radical MAGA Republicans in the House and Senate have imposed draconian caps on state and local tax deductions that will cost middle class Americans thousands of dollars in higher taxes, and then they're trying to portray themselves as the firefighters who are saving it when they were the arsonists who burned down the state and local tax deduction,” Jeffries said at a press conference on Capitol Hill.
“Nobody's gonna buy it.”
Prior to 2017, taxpayers could deduct the full amount of their state and local taxes they paid as a way to reduce their federal tax burden. Republicans, backed by Trump, imposed a new $10,000 cap on the federal SALT deduction as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, arguing that the deduction only hurt wealthy taxpayers and favored lower-income Americans.
Democrats accused Republicans of targeting residents of high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois, all of which lean Democratic. They say the tax caps hurt middle-class workers in those wealthy states and have been fighting to raise or eliminate them ever since, an effort joined by Republican lawmakers in those areas who have tried to distance themselves from the party's tax reform.
Democrats are divided over SALT, with some calling for the caps to be lifted and others proposing new caps. This debate arose in 2021 when the then-Democrat-controlled House of Representatives considered President Biden's infrastructure bill.
President Trump, who signed the bill into law in 2017, has now reversed course and indicated he is reconsidering the SALT cap.
In a social media post last week, Trump suggested he plans to use his second term in the White House to remove the ceiling he installed.
“I will turn things around, bring back the salt, lower taxes and do more,” he said.WrittenThe day before he posted on his Truth Social accountHeld a meetingOn Long Island.
The rally, held at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, was part of President Trump's broader strategy to energize conservative voters in vulnerable New York battleground districts to help House Republicans retain their seats in next year's elections.
Democrats want to retake those seats, and Jeffries on Wednesday singled out New York and California, two states where the SALT cap is a major issue, as central to the Democratic strategy to regain control of the House.
“There are certainly some fierce battles concentrated in New York and California, but the race is broad and House Democrats are becoming increasingly aggressive,” he said.
Jeffries also sharply criticized President Trump's plans to impose stiff tariffs on imports to boost domestic manufacturing.
“Trump's tariff plan is a heavy-handed tax on working families and working-class Americans that will increase their burden by thousands of dollars a year,” he said.
Jeffries said Democrats, with control of the House and Kamala Harris in the White House, would push for a different tax strategy that prioritizes working-class benefits such as the child tax credit, the low-income housing tax credit and the earned income tax credit.
“We also need to evaluate some of the provisions of the Republican tax scam, which has seen 83 percent of the benefits go to the wealthiest 1 percent and saddle our children and grandchildren with $2 trillion worth of unnecessary debt to subsidize the lives of the rich and shameless,” Jeffries said.
The fight over the nation's tax system will be at the forefront of Congress next year because many provisions of the 2017 Republican law are set to expire at the end of 2025, including the SALT cap.
