After a marathon markup of the House Ways and Means Committee’s draft of President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the signature legislative priority can finally be consolidated by the House Budget Committee, the penultimate step before the bill can be brought for a floor vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) wants the chamber to pass the bill by Memorial Day, not just to meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s July 4th deadline, but also for voters to feel the magnitude of the resulting tax relief before the 2026 midterm elections.
That is, of course, unless the Republicans in name only get their way.
According to Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), tripling the state and local tax deduction cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for those earning less than $400,000 is worth nuking the bill entirely. To be clear, every RINO and Democrat who votes against the OBBB is voting against an 11% tax cut and in favor of a 22% tax hike on the average American.
The OBBB is neither perfect nor final. The Tax Foundation estimates that even with the preliminary pay-fors voted out of numerous committees, the OBBB still adds a little more than $3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, meaning that the House and the Senate will hopefully negotiate further spending cuts. But the tax cuts are not merely the extension of the expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but new and real tax relief for the working class that would be screwed by an unfettered SALT deduction.
A failure to extend the expiring provisions of the TCJA would result in an average 22% tax hike for the public heading into the 2026 midterm election year. Taxes would increase for nearly two-thirds of all households, and the GDP would be reduced by a percentage point.
The OBBB doesn’t just prevent this. The nonpartisan Joint Economic Committee found that those making between $15,000 and $30,000 would see a 21% tax cut in 2027 relative to the current policy of TCJA expiration, while those earning $30,000 to $40,000 would see an 18% cut. That’s even greater than the tax cut that a clean TCJA extension would deliver, primarily due to the increased child tax credit and liberal tax exemptions such as tipped income and overtime.
Again, this bill is not perfect. Republicans ought to add more spending cuts and cut off federal subsidies to liberal pet projects such as Medicaid for illegal immigrants. That means the last thing the OBBB needs is another trillion in added debt to fund an even further elevation of the SALT deduction cap, which, in a perfect world, should be zero.
SALT CAUCUS VS. SPEAKER: JOHNSON EYES WEEKEND TO STRIKE DEAL WITH BLUE STATE REPUBLICANS
The grand irony of Lawler’s threat to sink the bill is that even with the $10,000 — again, a full three times as restrictive as what GOP leadership has included in the OBBB — every income bracket in Lawler’s district still saw a tax cut after the 2017 passage of the TCJA.
Lawler voting with Democrats to hike taxes on the poor to maintain the pretense that he’s helping the richest members of his district — statistically speaking, some of the richest people in the whole country — wouldn’t be tantamount to cutting off one’s nose to spite his face. Rather, it would be outright political suicide, the clearest violation of the golden Republican rule: Do no tax hikes, especially on the workers who need it the most.