WASHINGTON — Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) is celebrating an 11th-hour deal for a 400% increase in State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions as part of President Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” as the measure still faces some opposition from fiscal hawks for final passage in the House.
“For the middle class, this is a real win, especially in a state like New York,” Lawler told The Post in an exclusive interview Wednesday trumpeting the increase from a $10,000 to a $40,000 deduction cap for individual filers, noting how his constituents suffer the highest taxes in the country between property and income rates.
That rate would then be projected to increase by 1% over the next decade.
An amendment has yet to be filed formally implementing the changes in the House Rules Committee, but House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) has promised the additions — along with changes to Medicaid and green-energy tax credits’ spending — will be published before the full vote.
The Hudson Valley Republican sat through marathon meetings for weeks with White House officials, House Speaker Mike Johnson’s team, GOP members of the chamber’s SALT caucus — and Trump himself, who called out Lawler for pressing the SALT issue in a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill Tuesday.
“I know your district better than you do,” the president chided during the House Republican conference meeting, warning the New York pol that the push for a higher-than-$30,000 SALT cap risked upending the Republican agenda — and wouldn’t be a determining factor in his 2026 re-election bid.
“His objective was to get the bill passed,” he said of the exchange with Trump, and the two spoke later by phone in private conference calls with congressional and White House aides about the path forward.
Lawler forged ahead with fellow Empire State Republican Reps. Nick LaLota, Andrew Garbarino and Elise Stefanik, as well as Reps. Tom Kean (R-NJ) and Young Kim (R-Calif.) among others to get the cap, which will limit deductions for tax filers with incomes higher than $500,000.
Both Lawler and Stefanik have hinted at gubernatorial ambitions — and incumbent New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul lashed out at the SALT-y Republicans for having “caved again” and “lost the full SALT deduction” that was in place before the passage of Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
“SALT may never have come back — it probably would’ve stayed at $10,000,” Lawler returned fire when speaking with The Post, pointing to Democrats having held a trifecta in Washington during former President Joe Biden’s first two years in office and never increasing the tax deductions.
“For Hochul to now say there’s nothing to celebrate,” he went on, pointing to the tax cuts preventing the single-largest tax hike on Americans in history. “They can’t even get unity in their own party.”
“They’re frauds,” he said of Hochul as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who said Wednesday the “so-called SALT deal is a humiliating failure for NY House Republicans.”
“Kathy Hochul didn’t criticize Chuck Schumer for failing to deliver. We’re getting a 400% increase. They should be saying, ‘Thank you,’” Lawler said, ripping the Democratic leader in an X post later Wednesday as a “putz” and calling for his retirement.
“Hochul is the worst governor in America. We have the highest burden,” he added, highlighting her tax hikes on small businesses and $9 per day congestion pricing “fleecing hardworking New Yorkers” commuting into Manhattan.
“While we have good-paying jobs — and we’re really grateful for that — it is very expensive,” Orangetown cop Pat Casey, who serves on Rockland County’s Police Benevolent Association, told The Post Wednesday. “We are seeing migration of people moving further north because property taxes are very high in Westchester and Rockland.
“By no means are we millionaires because of the SALT bill,” he added in a swipe at Democrats who have dubbed the tax package a massive cut for the ultra-rich.
“We’re the highest tax county,” added Congers volunteer firefighter Michael Graziano, who also serves as a councilman in Clarkstown, “as a working guy you definitely need it. … A lot of people can’t afford the taxes to stay here and that’s why we’re having such difficulty getting firefighters.”
But the projected budgetary effect has also rankled conservatives in the House Freedom Caucus like Chairman Andy Harris (R-Md.), who is still seeking to balance spending reductions to green-energy tax credits and Medicaid with the overall revenue decrease from tax cuts.
“In the last 24 hours, there was a little SALT deal made, and I don’t think it went in the right direction,” Harris told reporters on Capitol Hill Wednesday, “but the White House offered a proposal late last night, that I think fulfills the other two parts of what the president talked about, and there’s broad agreement in the House Freedom Caucus that if that’s included in the package, I think this package is on route to get passed.”
But the Freedom Caucus leader said passage was still likely more than a week away — before Trump demanded its members visit the White House to hash out their disagreements with the package.
The bill, which will be considered under a process known as budget reconciliation and could pass by a simple majority of both chambers of Congress, is expected to hike the national deficit by nearly $4 trillion due largely to the tax cuts but also includes cuts to Medicaid by imposing work requirements and rescissions of renewable energy incentives from former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
“You’re having seven times more money going to the able-bodied than the vulnerable,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) added of the current Medicaid program Wednesday. “The fact of the matter is this has massive savings … and it has massive deficits in the first 5 years because we’re not addressing the structural reform … including very specifically eliminating the 45% of the subsidies under the ‘Green New Scam’ that continue.”
The reconciliation bill will also spend hundreds of billions of dollars on national defense and border security.
Members like Lawler pushed for the boosted security spending and savings while also preventing too many cuts to public health care coverage.
“We worked to protect critical services like Medicaid … while at the same token making sure that those who were gaming the system,” he said, touting the “common-sense reforms” that protected the “most vulnerable” including “seniors, children, single mothers.”
“Is everything perfect? No, but no legislation is,” he added. “We’re all concerned about the deficit we all want to curb spending but you’re not going to fix this in one sitting.”
“At the end of the day, folks are going to have to get a way to ‘yes’ to get anything done.”
