Suburban Republicans mostly quiet after meeting with Trump on taxes

Mum’s the word for New York Republicans following their meeting on Saturday night with President-elect Donald Trump to discuss the possible modification of a tax provision that has upset suburbanites across the political spectrum.

Reps. Mike Lawler, Nick Lalota, Andrew Garbarino, Nicole Malliotakis, Nick Langworthy and Claudia Tenney made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago this weekend to plead with Trump to lift the “SALT cap,” which limits the amount of state and local taxes that Americans can deduct from their federally taxable income to just $10,000. Eliminating or raising the SALT cap has become a top priority for legislators representing high-tax states like New York. 

Ahead of the meeting, Politico reported that Trump was prepared to support raising the SALT cap to $20,000 for joint filers. But New York Republicans hoped to raise the cap even higher; Lawler re-introduced a bill last week that would raise the SALT cap to $100,000 for single filers and $200,000 for joint filers. 

Despite much fanfare in the lead-up to the meeting, Lawler and the others appear to have emerged with little to show for it beyond Trump’s commitment to lifting the cap in the abstract.

“Tonight my colleagues and I sat down with President @realDonaldTrump to discuss some of the issues impacting our country and New York. The President reiterated his support for lifting the cap on SALT and ending congestion pricing. We will get it done,” Lawler posted on X.

Malliotakis wrote in a post on X, simply that the meeting had been “productive,” without sharing additional details, while Tenney wrote in another post on X that the meeting had been “very productive.”

A spokesperson for Lawler declined to answer when asked whether Trump had expressed support during the meeting for raising the SALT cap to $200,000 or $20,000 for joint filers. Instead, the spokesperson referred City & State to Lawler’s post on X.

Spokespeople for Trump, Malliotakis, Lalota, and Tenney did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Garbarino said that the representative would release a statement but did not provide one by the time of publication.

The debate over the SALT cap has pitted New York Republicans against their more conservative colleagues – all while Democrats have watched with glee and offered a bipartisan hand they knew Republicans were too stubborn to accept. 

It was Trump himself who capped SALT deductions at $10,000 in his 2017 tax bill, despite dissenting votes from Republicans like New York Reps. Elise Stefanik and Lee Zeldin – both of whom Trump plans to appoint to serve in his second administration.

At the time, the SALT cap was understood as a blow mostly to wealthy Democrats living in high-tax areas. But since 2017, Republicans have made significant pickups in New York, and certain segments of the party are coming to see the Empire State as winnable turf with the right candidate. Suburban lawmakers like Lawler see raising the SALT cap as exactly the kind of financial incentive that could reward New Yorkers who have already swung red and entice others to come around. But more conservative Republicans in lower-tax states remain opposed to easing New Yorkers’ income tax burden.

In February 2024, the GOP almost advanced a bill to raise the SALT cap to $20,000 for married couples. But Democrats opposed it because it was paired with a resolution that condemned President Joe Biden’s energy policy, and New York Republicans could not convince the likes of Reps. Matt Gaetz, Chip Roy, Paul Gosar, and 11 others to bring the bill to the floor for a vote, so it died. 

Now, Gaetz is gone, but Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House, and the other members of the Freedom Caucus remain an obstacle.

On the 2024 campaign trail, Republicans vowed to deliver on SALT if elected, and they grew emboldened to own the issue after then-candidate Trump promised to “get SALT back” in a Truth Social post in September. Following Trump’s victory in November, Lawler – who’s eyeing a gubernatorial run next year – vowed not to vote for a Republican tax bill unless it includes an increase to the SALT cap.

Democrats have been eager to foil Lawler’s hopes to use SALT in his springboard to the Governor’s Mansion. 

Ahead of today’s negotiations, party leadership said that anything short of a full repeal of the SALT cap would represent a political loss for Republicans and a failure of the New York moderates to stand up to the leader of the MAGA movement. “The thing that’s interesting about the whole state and local tax deduction issue is that Republicans burn the house down and now want to pretend that they’re firefighters,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said at a press conference on Thursday.

In what might be a preemptive strike against her most capable challenger, Gov. Kathy Hochul joined in on the fun. “The SALT cap has cost New Yorkers up to $12 billion a year since it took effect in 2018, robbing middle-class families of their hard-earned money,” she posted on X on Wednesday.

Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, whose district neighbors Lawler’s, has been stirring the pot on SALT ever since Trump won re-election. Less than two weeks after election day, he wrote a letter to Trump offering to rally bipartisan support for a bill that would lift the SALT cap entirely for anyone making less than $400,000 a year. Republicans were unamused. Most declined to take Ryan up on his offer and instead said they would be just fine fixing the problem themselves through a Republican tax bill. 

But Republicans’ insistence on refusing bipartisan support might mean that they won’t be able to lift the cap as high as they would like. 

“Ideally, we would go back to unlimited, but I’m not sure that’s realistic as you’re negotiating through a tax bill,” Lawler told NY1 the day before meeting with Trump.