President Donald Trump will meet with a trio of moderate House Republicans at the White House on Wednesday as he courts unified GOP support for his agenda in the closely divided chamber, according to two Republicans familiar with the meeting.
The discussions are likely to include the fate of a state and local tax deduction — referred to as “SALT” — that is playing an outsize role in the debate over extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts enacted during Trump’s previous term. The deduction is particularly important to one of the attendees, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), who spoke extensively about the issue at a POLITICO Playbook event on Wednesday morning.
“I will never support a tax bill that does not lift a cap on SALT,” said Lawler. “We’re going to have to work through it as a conference. This will be done through reconciliation. And ultimately, as the President said, we’re going to have one big beautiful bill.
The other two members Trump will huddle with are Reps. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), according to the sources, who were granted anonymity to share details about the private meeting. It comes as House GOP leaders are assembling a massive piece of legislation that would carry the tax cuts and Trump’s other priorities on immigration and energy policy.
The three Republicans are notable moderates who recently held on to highly competitive seats in the November elections. The centrists could balk at some proposals hardliners have floated to pay for their legislative agenda, including drastic cuts for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and work requirements for Medicaid. The Trump administration and Republican leadership will likely need to heed their concerns given the GOP’s slim House majority.
Lawler, in particular, has been a leader in the effort to lift the $10,000 limit on the state and local tax deduction, a concession being demanded by numerous House members from high-tax districts in New York, New Jersey and California.
“In a midterm election, this issue is going to matter in states like New York and California, and Democrats know that,” Lawler said at the POLITICO Playbook event, contending that some Republicans lost election battles over the cap on the SALT deduction.
It allows people to take a federal write-off for property, income and sales taxes they pay at the state and local levels, and is particularly important in districts with high property taxes. Eliminating the cap would be hugely expensive and opposed by most other Republicans. But a number of other options to loosen it are under consideration.
New York, New Jersey and California Republicans made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago recently to reiterate their demands to lift the $10,000 cap in negotiations over a large tax bill. Trump, who vowed during the campaign to “get SALT back,” told the lawmakers to come up with a “fair number.”
Other issues that could be contentious for swing state Republicans are calls to repeal green energy credits implemented by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
A document prepared by the House Budget Committee listed their repeal among potential options to pay for the GOP’s legislative agenda. Republicans are looking to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and provide additional funding for border security, though there are still ongoing disagreements about whether to do so in two bills or in one “big beautiful bill” — as Trump has suggested doing and House Republicans have called for.
