President Donald Trump has pivoted from helping Israel bomb Iran to the Capitol Hill battle over his signature tax-budget-and-border bill, which he wants wrapped up by July 4.
“Now that we have made PEACE abroad,” he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday, “we must finish the job here at home by passing ‘THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’ and getting the Bill to my desk, ASAP.” He wants Republican senators to get a deal if they have to “lock [themselves] in a room” all weekend.
Even as the Senate grapples with the bill’s many provisions, there is one sticky question that could sink the whole thing: How big a tax subsidy will a MAGA-dominated Congress give to high-income residents of mostly Democratic suburbs and big cities in the upper Midwest and coastal states?
I’m talking, of course, about the state and local income tax deduction, a.k.a. the SALT deduction. Without a significant SALT deduction, a handful of suburban Republicans are threatening to vote against the bill and bring it down. To which one has to ask, what would be worse for the country: not passing a bill, which could endanger extension of the 2017 tax cuts and a much-needed increase in the debt ceiling—or passing a bill that includes a SALT deduction, a demonstrably bad policy that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars?