Some Republicans Getting ‘SALTy’ and Gumming Up the Big, Beautiful Tax Bill

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Some Republicans Getting 'SALTy' and Gumming Up the Big, Beautiful Tax Bill 1

If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s paying for someone else’s indulgences.

You know, like the ‘Pay my student loans‘ kind of crap the left is always pulling.

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Yo. You took those out, you pay for them. 

My attitude extends to things like owning a house in a high tax state and being able to deduct your state property taxes from your federal income tax tab.

EXCUSE ME, WHUT?

While my sympathies are entirely in your camp as far as being raped by your respective blue state governments, my sympathy meter is pegged when it comes to sharing that burden. I don’t have any deductions other than what comes with ‘married, filing jointly,’ and I don’t see where enabling the fleecing of their captive citizens on the backs of taxpayers across the country as a whole benefits anyone but those same, rapacious, impecunious blue state governments.

That really was one of the lovely leveling things about the original Trump tax cuts.

We were all pretty much equal in Uncle Sam’s eye.

And now Republicans in those high tax states, especially those like big conservative Elise Stefanik – who happens to have her eye on the governor’s mansion, go figure – want that deduction raised on back up.

Believe it or not, they offered these poltroons a $30K lift for the deduction in order to get this legislation moving, and don’t you know?

It’s just not good enough.

We need to subsidize California, New York’s, et al.’s profligacy, ladies and germs. 

Or it won’t be the usual Chip Roy-type cutting curmudgeons shutting this budget circus down – it’ll be the handout types.

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Rep. Young Kim won’t vote for a budget bill with a state and local tax deduction cap of $30,000.

That’s the number Kim and other Republicans from high-tax states say has been floated as an offer as the powerful House Ways and Means Committee continues work shaping major parts of President Donald Trump’s budget proposal, including the modification of tax provisions.

But they say the proposed $30,000 figure for the tax deduction cap, commonly referred to as SALT, is still too low and would not get their support.

Kim called the $30,000 proposal a “non-starter” and a “slap in the face to the hardworking taxpayers in her district.”

“I’ve become one of the saltiest members of Congress,” she said during a roundtable with small business owners at the Yorba Linda Public Library on Friday, May 9.

Kim and a group of other Republicans from high-tax states — including New York and New Jersey — are complicating House Republican leadership’s efforts to push through the budget bill through the House by Memorial Day, actively campaigning for a SALT cap deduction increase.

Kim said she’d prefer a SALT cap set at $62,000 for individuals. That wouldn’t fully restore deductions for married couples, she said, but that would be a “reasonable offer.”

SIXTY-TWO GRAND!

Thirty grand is so ‘insulting’ to her constituents. Try being on our end of it, chica, and listening to you. 

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Blows my mind.

And mind you, these are the do-nothings who’ve only passed, what? A whole six frickin’ bills for Trump to sign, and yet they have all the time in the world to hold out for this?

…So far, Congress has only passed six bills—five of which have been signed into law—the fewest of any president in the first 100 days of an administration in the last seven decades, according to a TIME analysis of congressional records.

They should be so mortified they’re hiding in Congressional bathrooms from mobs with torches and pitchforks.

I don’t think Speaker Johnson is going to go for over twice what they’ve offered already, and what just came out of Ways and Means sticks to the $30K ceiling.

Even New Yorkers are like, ‘Stuff a sock in it – this is good.’

Everything else in the budget bill is pretty much in line with promises so far, with some minor scraps expected over some of the ‘clean energy’ hits from reps who have projects in their states.

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…The House Ways and Means Committee release of the tax measures, ahead of planned debate on the panel Tuesday, is a sign the Republican-controlled chamber is moving toward a floor vote this month on the legislation. The bill aims to cut taxes by more than $4 trillion and reduce spending by at least $1.5 trillion over a decade.

The proposal doesn’t include a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans, after weeks of debate among Republicans about whether to raise levies on millionaires. The bill would permanently extend the 37% top rate for individuals that was set in Trump’s 2017 tax law. That’s despite Trump telling Speaker Mike Johnson as recently as last week that he wanted a 39.6% rate for individuals making more than $2.5 million.

…The bill would raise the nation’s borrowing limit by $4 trillion. This is smaller than the Senate’s preferred $5 trillion level. Lawmakers are hoping to push any additional votes on raising the debt ceiling until after the 2026 midterms.

The draft language eliminates income taxes on tips and overtime pay through 2028. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith had vowed to follow through on Trump’s campaign pledges to end those levies.

Trump had also campaigned on ending taxes on Social Security benefits, but that cannot be done in the special budget process that Congress is using to advance the tax package. Instead, the bill provides a $4,000 bonus for seniors on top of the regular standard deduction.

…One of the thorniest issues — including a contentious standoff over increasing the state and local tax deduction — is still not resolved. The draft calls for increasing the state and local tax deduction to $30,000 for both individuals and couples, up from $10,000, with income limits for single taxpayers earning $200,000 or joint filers making twice that. But some lawmakers representing high-tax areas want an even bigger tax break — as much as $124,000 for joint filers.

On the hook for tax increases: wealthy private universities, which could see an increase in the levy on endowments from 1.4% to as high as 21% on investment income.

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Nothing should trigger anything on the scale of this handout meltdown from Republicans ($124K for joint filers – are they smoking dope?!) who should know better and act wiser.

Wait.

What did I just say? 

Money talks.

So does ambition.

Makes me puke the stupid crap they’ll torpedo progress over.

Posted in Republican News