Blue State Republicans Threaten To Stop Trump’s Reconciliation Over Demands
President Donald Trump and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson are facing a possible mutiny in their ranks.
Some blue state Republicans are set to block the reconciliation bill unless they get relief for their constituents on state and local taxes (SALT), PJ Media reported.
The report said that GOP lawmakers from Democrat-dominated states have tied their political futures to increasing those deductions, which were limited to $10,000 per taxpayer in the 2017 tax cuts.
“There’s a green ‘yes’ button and there’s a red ‘no’ button to press. Come time, if there’s not enough SALT in this bill, I’m pressing the red ‘no’ button,” Republican New York Rep. Nick LaLota said. “It is a hill I am willing to stake my entire congressional career on.”
But if SALT deductions are increased, it would cause issues for other Republicans because it would either raise the deficit or lower the tax cuts when they are renewed.
“Republicans are juggling several other big-ticket tax cuts, namely the roughly $4 trillion cost of extending the rest of the 2017 tax bill, and many do not want to dedicate significant resources to what they see as a handout to rich residents of blue states. In the House, lawmakers have given themselves a $4.5 trillion allowance for cutting taxes, a sum that could shrink if the party does not also cut $2 trillion in spending,” The New York Times reported.
“My bottom line is, we need to have a fiscally responsible package,” Republican North Carolina Rep. Greg Murphy said. “It is pathetic that we have to bail out high-tax states.”
This places Speaker Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, between a rock and a hard place as one group of Republicans demands more SALT deductions and another GOP faction threatens to torpedo reconciliation if deep cuts are not made.
Johnson said in January that he anticipates passing one “big, beautiful bill” by Memorial Day that would cover the majority of Trump’s agenda.
Johnson stated in an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” that Republicans would try to incorporate as many policy issues as they could into a large reconciliation measure in order to avoid the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the majority of legislation in the Senate.
For reconciliation legislation to be passed in the upper chamber, 50 votes, or a simple majority, are required.
“We’re 15 days out from the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump for his second term. And we want to make sure that we’re jump-starting the agenda now over the next two weeks, so that he’s prepared and ready on day one. We have a lot to do, as you know. And we have been putting all the plays together and figuring out the sequence of how we’re going to run those plays. And we’re really excited about it,” Johnson told host Maria Bartiromo at the time.
“At the end of the day, President Trump is going to prefer, as he likes to say, one big, beautiful bill. And there’s a lot of merit to that, because we can put it all together, one big up-or-down vote, which can save the country, quite literally, because there are so many elements to it. And it’ll give us a little bit more time to negotiate that and get it right,” Johnson added.
Asked for a “realistic timeline” on getting the large bill through to the president’s desk, Johnson said that would happen “certainly by May, yes.”
Johnson said Republicans are “targeting a vote in the House maybe in the first week of April,” adding that the vote may come “maybe as soon as April 3, and then move it over to the Senate.”
“That would put that bill on the president’s desk for signature by the end of April. That would be fantastic,” Johnson said. “And, in a worst-case scenario, Memorial Day.”
