President Donald Trump arrives for a House Republican meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 20, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Tasos Katopodis | Getty Images News | Getty Images
President Donald Trump failed Tuesday to sway key House Republicans from blue states to drop opposition to a major tax bill, which they say does not do enough to boost so-called SALT deductions for their constituents.
Opposition to the bill from five self-identified members of the “SALT Caucus” threatens to derail the legislation, which Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., hope to see passed before Memorial Day weekend.
Trump visited the GOP House caucus on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to push lawmakers to approve the bill quickly and directly called out the caucus, which is focused on the question of the tax deduction allowed for state and local taxes on federal income tax returns.
“A fair SALT deduction is a matter of fundamental fairness for the hardworking families we represent, including the many who proudly support President Trump and voted for him, in part, because he promised to restore SALT,” the five Republican SALT holdouts said in a statement later.
Voter unhappiness with a current cap on the deduction in some states could affect Republican chances of retaining control in the House of Representatives after the 2026 midterm elections.
A Republican tax bill in 2017 capped the SALT deduction at $10,000, in what was seen as a political slap at Democratic-leaning states in the Northeast and California, where residents often pay much more in state and local taxes than in Republican-leaning “red” states.
A proposal in the current bill calls for the deduction to be raised to $30,000. But that is not enough for a handful of GOP lawmakers from those blue states.
“I’m not going to sacrifice my constituents and throw them under the bus in a bad faith negotiation, which is what this has been by leadership and [House Ways and Means Committee Chairman] Jason Smith,” Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., one of the SALT caucus members, said during an interview later Tuesday on Fox News.
On Monday, GOP leaders offered a $40,000 cap on deductions, said two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly.
One of those people said the cap would only apply to people earning $751,600 per year or less, and that the cap would remain in place for four years before eventually decreasing to $30,000 for people making $400,000 or less.
Trump, in his visit Tuesday, told the SALT Caucus, “Let it go,” NBC News reported.
The president was more blunt to Lawler. “I know your district better than you do,” Trump told Lawler, according to a tweet by Punchbowl News co-founder Jake Sherman.
“If you lose because of SALT, you were going to lose anyway,” Trump said to Lawler, who later confirmed that comment during his interview on Fox News.
One SALT Caucus member, Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., later posted a statement on X from her, Lawler, and fellow GOP Reps. Andrew Garbarino and Nick Lalota of New York, and Rep. Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey.
“We share President Trump’s call for unity within the House Republican Conference,” the statement said.
“We hope his remarks today motivate the Speaker to advance a SALT proposal that delivers meaningful relief for our middle-class constituents, as we have worked in good faith with House Leadership for more than a year,” the statement said.
“Our states are donor states, consistently subsidizing so-called fiscally responsible red states.”
The last line of the statement referred to the net of taxes paid to the federal government from individual states compared with federal assistance and programs that benefit states.
Trump’s and Johnson’s efforts to get the tax bill passed have also been frustrated by conservatives who want to cut the federal budget deficit and cut more from the Medicaid health coverage program than the current iteration of the bill proposes.
Trump told the caucus on Tuesday, “Don’t f— around with Medicaid.”
Correction: A person familiar with the matter said the new SALT cap of $40,000 offered by GOP leaders would eventually decrease to $30,000 for people making $400,000 or less. A previous version of this story misstated the income limit.
