Others like Long Island Rep. Andrew Garbarino, who co-chairs the bipartisan SALT caucus in the House, has floated eliminating the cap entirely.
“I personally don’t want to be constrained by CBO,” Tenney said, “but the Senate parliamentarian uses CBO, which is why I suggested to Trump later on during the meeting” — while the president-elect was busy deejaying for the delegation at Mar-a-Lago — “hire an independent contractor like an Ernst and Young, or a Deloitte … that would be a Department of Government Efficiency issue.”
It’s unclear whether congressional Democrats will play ball on the tax proposals, but the measure could pass with 218 votes in the GOP-controlled House and potentially by a simple majority in the 53-47 Republican Senate if it’s put forward under a process known as budget reconciliation, which lets bills pass without clearing the 60-vote filibuster so long as they’re determined to only affect spending by the Senate parliamentarian
Finger Lakes Rep. Claudia Tenney told The Post that the magic cap number, which some participants suggested should be as high as $100,000 or $200,000 for individuals, likely rested on an analysis by either the Joint Committee on Taxation or the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
“I would say to them, ‘We subsidize farming,’ which I’m supportive of, that we subsidize corn, we help in other areas. So there’s got to be some give and take.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ) said “inflation” has so “ravaged” taxpayers since then that the cap would have to “at least double.”
Rockland County Rep. Mike Lawler and Suffolk County Rep. Nick LaLota introduced legislation last Congress to lift the cap to $60,000 for individual filers and to $120,000 for married couples, eliminating the so-called “marriage penalty” previously in place.
Malliotakis, for her part, said her money is on the NY GOP members getting their language out first, calling the delegation a “driving force” behind the drafting of tax language.
“When you go and get a hamburger or go to the store — God help you if you gotta buy construction materials — everything,” Van Drew said. “The point is $10,000 then, when those cuts were done, is honestly in my mind at least double that right now, just to stay still, much less help a little bit more.”
“The cap can’t be $200,000, and that’s a number that was thrown around,” he added. “It can’t be $100,000.”
Republican lawmakers from high-tax New York and New Jersey are pushing to double the $10,000 state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap for their residents — but could press for an increase of 10 times that level — as part of President-elect Donald Trump’s highly anticipated tax package later this year.
“I think we’re spending billions of dollars on subsidizing wind turbines, money on changing curriculum in school,” Van Drew added of bloated spending initiatives in the Garden State. “It just goes on and on.”
“What we’ve been doing as members of the House Ways and Means Committee is going through the different scenarios, crunching the numbers to get an idea of where SALT — not just SALT — but all the other tax proposals fit together,” Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told The Post.
“That cannot come back,” Malliotakis said of the alternative minimum tax, which sets a payment threshold based on income for Americans filing their returns with the IRS, arguing it “prohibited” many taxpayers “from benefiting from SALT.”
