Restoring Tax Fairness for States and Localities Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I strongly support this legislation to eliminate the cap on the State and Local Tax (or SALT) deduction. Two years ago, Republicans capped the SALT deduction to force districts represented by Democratic Members to pay for the bulk of their Tax Scam. That cap raised over $662 billion in revenue for Republican tax priorities, nearly all of it from Democratic states like New York. New York State already pays $48 billion more to the Federal government than it gets back, and the loss of the SALT deduction was responsible for a $2.3 billion revenue hole in New York last year putting critical services at risk.

Some of my colleagues claim that the SALT deduction will just benefit the wealthy. Wrong. In 2016, 1.2 million New Yorkers used the SALT deduction, and more than half of those taxpayers earned less than $100,000 per year. We are not talking about a loophole used by the richest Americans--many of which, I will point out, were preserved in the Republican Tax Scam. We are talking about the largest deduction for the teachers, office workers, and first responders who make up the middle class in my district.

We must remove this cap and stop punishing the hard-working people of New York simply because of where they live. I urge my colleagues to vote yes on this bill.

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