'Our strength is in numbers': Wealthy suburban Republicans band together against Trump budget

07 May

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York) at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on July 18, 2024 (Maxim Elramsisy/Shutterstock.com)

With President Donald Trump’s budget bill on the ropes and facing opposition from Democrats and right wing extremists alike, five Republicans are hitting the bill's chances of survival from an unexpected place: wealthy blue state suburbs that want property tax caps.

“The five of us have discussed our own different needs … but we recognize that our strength is in numbers, and the more we’re able to stick together, the more we’ll be able to answer the call for all of us,” Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) told The Hill.

The block of five Republicans consists of LaLota along with Reps. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) Young Kim (R-Calif.) and Thomas Kean (R-N.J.). All represent wealthier suburban districts of major U.S. metropolitan areas, where high property taxes make an increased state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap particularly valuable.

The SALT deduction allows individuals or married couples to deduct up to $10,000 of their state and local taxes when filing federal taxes. The cap is set to expire at the end of the year along with other provisions of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Many Republicans in the House see the deduction as a concession to wealthy blue states.

“I don’t see that there’s a real interest from anybody, Republican or Democrat, in helping millionaires and billionaires,” said US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) in a recent statement to Politico.

But LaLota told reporters “$400,000 may be rich in Missouri, it ain’t rich in Suffolk County. So, I think that approach just exacerbates the anti-blue state approach that existed eight years ago.”

Westchester County, New York, had an average property tax bill on single-family homes of $17,392 last year, according to a report from California-based ATTOM Data Solutions. New York’s Binghamton County's effective tax rate was 3.19 percent, the highest in a nation, while the national average is 0.90 percent.

The Blue state GOP group has considerable leverage in this year’s reconciliation negotiations given the House GOP’s slim margins. House Republican leaders face near united opposition from Democratic Party members leery of Medicaid cuts. They can’t afford to lose support from more than three Republican lawmakers, unless they make concessions to Democrats, which the GOP leadership has vowed not to do.

Read the full Hill report here.

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