Revealed: 'Boiling internal GOP debate' remains daunting roadblock for Trump's spending bill

16 May

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

Politico reports Republicans have a razor-thin chance of passing President Donald Trump’s 2025 budget (and its 2017 tax cut extension) without support from Democrats. The GOP only holds its tiny majority in the House partially thanks to Republicans in blue states like New York and California, but it is those Republicans who are stymieing Trump’s bill to the ire of the greater party.

“They have a very myopic view of New York and California,” Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) said about Smith and some other red-state Republicans.

Even a small enclave can overwhelm a majority this slim, and Lawler and a group of Republican representatives from New Jersey, New York and California have formed a daunting united front demanding a higher federal deduction on their affluent states’ exorbitant property taxes.

Nearly all members of the blue-state squad were elected since 2020, and they make no bones about their delicate chances of being re-elected in a mid-term with Trump as president. Without relief from state property taxes, they say their voters will punish them at the ballot box next year, leaving Democrats in control of the House.

However, if Trump is to get his tax cut extension and the “big, beautiful” deficit, critics say it brings, Republicans will have to drum up revenue or make painful budget cuts in other places. Deficit hawks are already waiting in the wings to topple the bill if it fails to pay for itself with cuts.

The fight illuminates social rifts between so-called “working American” red state Republicans and affluent Republicans from Democratic-leaning states.

“The median income in Lawler’s district is about $119,000, and half of his constituents have college degrees,” reports Politico, compared to the average income of $60,000 in the district of Ways and Means Chair Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) Of course, even “red-state” lawmakers from middle-income districts tend to be wealthy. Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has an alleged net worth of $22 million.

As a moderate from a blue state, Lawler says he is outnumbered among his Republican peers, but he told Politico that party members need to understand the importance of his so-called State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT) caucus to the party’s precarious majority.

“In the districts that determine the control of Congress — because there’s really only about 35 districts that are actually competitive — the fact is that it’s districts like mine that determine that outcome,” Lawler told Politico.

Lawler won re-election last year with 52.2 percent of the vote.

Read the full Politico report here.

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