Donald Trump’s surprise rollback of a controversial part of his own tax law won’t help him win any swing states, but some Republicans believe it could help them keep the House of Representatives.
After personally lobbying at least three threatened GOP lawmakers, Trump now promises to restore a key tax deduction known as the state and local tax deduction (SALT). It remains a major voting issue for millions of middle- and upper-class Americans in states with high local taxes and high living costs.
Those voters don’t live in states that would help Trump win the Electoral College. Instead, the SALT cap affects a narrow but influential segment of voters in wealthy suburban areas in blue states like New York, New Jersey and California — the very places that will determine House majorities this fall.
Republicans are well aware of the issue’s political power: Democrats took control of the House in 2018 thanks to several of these districts, where candidates such as Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) campaigned on promises to restore the deduction. Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), nicknamed “Mr. SALT” for his commitment to restoring the tax deduction, won back a GOP seat on Long Island.
But now the former president, who is primarily responsible for policy, is flipping the script. And vulnerable GOP members in those blue-state battleground districts plan to use Trump’s commitment to win over swing voters.
“It’s clear from his appearance on Long Island that he understands that while some may not consider New York a battleground state for him, he recognizes it is a battleground state for control of the House of Representatives,” said Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), adding that the New York GOP delegation has aggressively pushed the issue, including leaving salt shakers for “key people” at fundraisers.
That lobbying campaign extended from Congress to Trump himself.
“Every opportunity I’ve had to speak with the president or with the president, SALT has been part of that conversation,” said Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.), who represents the western Long Island district where the meeting was held. “Just as I’ve done here on Capitol Hill with the leadership and our colleagues.”
And it comes at a critical time for Republicans, whose internal polls suggest that all of their incumbents in New York remain on a viable path to victory, according to three people familiar with the figures, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private information. Senior Republicans are even hopeful about Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), whose Syracuse-area seat was widely considered unwinnable earlier this summer.
Democrats need just a handful of seats to retake the House, and their clearest path to power runs through the 16 GOP-held districts that Joe Biden won in 2020. Ten of those are in New York, New Jersey and California. Republican incumbents in those states will have to win over voters on local issues like taxes and crime, while asserting their independence from their party on other issues, such as abortion rights.
In New York, Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler face tough reelections, along with D’Esposito and Williams. In New Jersey, Democrats are targeting Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. And in Southern California, Reps. Michelle Steel, Young Kim and Mike Garcia all hold districts won by Biden.
Their Democratic opponents plan to aggressively remind voters that it was Trump who imposed the cap. Laura Gillen, who is challenging D’Esposito, called Trump’s change “a pre-election stunt” that would never come to fruition.
“It seems like Trump and my opponent, Anthony D’Esposito, think we’re going to have some kind of collective amnesia in the district and across the country, where we forget that Trump is the one who imposed these punitive tax policies to punish Democratic states for not voting for him,” she said.
Trump has discussed increasing the SALT deduction in conversations with economic advisers, according to one of them, Stephen Moore. During a meeting this summer, Trump and his campaign discussed potentially raising the deduction limit as a way to help the middle class.
When Trump posted a message this week about restoring the tax cut — and then reaffirmed the promise at his Long Island rally — members cheered.
“I know this was a very welcome tweet,” Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), the former chairman of his state’s GOP, said of Trump’s post. “They all campaigned on these issues, which disproportionately hurt New Yorkers.”
In the House of Representatives, a group of vulnerable Republicans in blue states have been strikingly vocal in demanding policy change from their party leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson. And many have been blunt about what they see as the potential political consequences.
Garcia, who holds one of the toughest seats in the GOP, said he directly confronted Finance Committee Chairman Jason Smith earlier this year about how failing to address the SALT issue would put Republicans back in the minority.
“‘You can do this now and affect it while we have the majority — or if we don’t do anything on SALT, good luck shaping this if you’re the top member of Ways and Means,’” Garcia recalled telling Smith. He said he first told his GOP colleagues to “own this SALT issue” in 2022, when the party was laying out its agenda shortly after winning the majority.
Instead, just weeks before Election Day, House Republicans had done little to advance the issue until Trump held a rally on Long Island this week.
In addition to eliminating the SALT cap, Trump has also proposed cutting taxes on Social Security, overtime and tips. These are measures widely seen as a populist move for voters like seniors on fixed incomes or service and hospitality workers in Las Vegas. But the SALT cut would hit middle- and upper-class families the hardest. In rural and working-class districts, even in blue states, many residents don’t take advantage of the SALT deduction because it doesn’t make financial sense at their income level.
To Democrats, the idea that the person who created the policy would step in to undo it is laughable. They were quick to cast doubt on Trump’s commitment to ending the SALT cap, which he did in a Truth Social post in which he promised to “get SALT back” but offered no details. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) compared it to an “arsonist volunteering for the fire department.”
“It’s one more piece of nonsense on top of a mountain of nonsense,” said Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.). “He’s a pathological liar.”
Both parties face internal opposition to a legislative solution. That will make it a major headache for party leaders trying to push through tax reform next year, when this deduction — and many others — will be eliminated.
There are plenty of fiscal hawks in the GOP, such as Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who don’t support raising the current SALT cap. It’s an issue that cleaves more along geographic lines than along party lines. Liberal Democrats outside the affected states, for example, have been reluctant to untangle the cap because it disproportionately hits wealthier families.
In high-tax states, both parties blame each other for not fixing the issue when they had the majority in the House. New York Republicans responded by arguing that Democrats had full control of the federal government during the first two years of the Biden administration and were not making any changes.
“They had majorities in two houses and the president, and they didn’t touch it,” Molinaro said. “I don’t think we should be lectured on the SALT deduction.”
Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.
