The group of blue-state House Republicans negotiating with leadership for a more generous state and local tax deduction isn’t any closer to a deal.
And complicating talks are internal divisions that spilled out into the open this week as Republicans sprinted to get their reconciliation bill through committee markups.
Rep. Nicole Malliotakis was reportedly asked to leave a Tuesday evening meeting between the SALT caucus and Speaker Mike Johnson. Malliotakis is the only member of the SALT caucus who backed the $30,000 SALT deduction cap passed by the House Ways and Means committee Monday — which triples the current $10,000 cap — arguing that it would help 98% of the taxpayers in her district.
Malliotakis brushed over that tension on Wednesday.
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“Look, I’ve spoken to all my colleagues in New York. Everything’s fine,” she told NOTUS. “We’re going in the same direction here, and I think that everybody’s just, everybody’s frustrated. It’s been a long, tedious process, and we’re almost at the finish line.”
So did Rep. Nick LaLota, who’s among the coalition of five moderate Republicans who are threatening to tank the reconciliation bill if they don’t get a higher SALT cap.
“No, there’s not,” he said when NOTUS asked him about internal disagreements over the specifics of SALT.
Asked how he views Malliotakis’ support for the $30,000 cap, LaLota added, “I love Nicole … she’s got different priorities. She should pursue those priorities.”
Despite members’ efforts to downplay the rift, it was apparent that tensions remained high between members of the SALT caucus and the Ways and Means Committee, which Malliotakis sits on.
New York Rep. Mike Lawler on Wednesday blasted the Ways and Means Committee’s chair, Rep. Jason Smith, and other committee members for putting the $30,000 cap forward, saying it was a number “nobody had agreed to or even was discussed with us.”
“That’s not acceptable. It’s not something I’m going to support,” he told reporters.
Earlier in the day, Lawler took a stab at Smith on social media after the chairman wrote a post on X celebrating the end of the Ways and Means markup, featuring a photo of President Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s drive-through.
“You forgot to add SALT with those fries, chairman,” Lawler responded.
LaLota also criticized Smith. “Chairman Smith hasn’t been honest with us with the math he’s presented to us during numerous meetings,” he told reporters. “He’s crafting a bill that cannot get the support of at least five salty Republicans.”
Smith had told reporters on Tuesday that he doesn’t think SALT caucus members are negotiating in good faith because “the comments that they’re saying in the press doesn’t look like they’re being too nice.”
On Tuesday, Malliotakis, too, sounded like she was siding with the committee over her fellow New York Republicans in the SALT caucus.
“As the only SALT caucus member on Ways and Means, all I know is they can sit and negotiate with themselves all they want but there will be no changes unless I and the committee agree,” she told reporters after leaving the Tuesday evening meeting with leadership.
The Ways and Means committee adopted the tax bill along party lines after a 17-hour markup that ended early Wednesday. That means any changes to the language will have to happen through a manager’s amendment approved by committee members.
The $30,000 figure hasn’t been the only point of internal disagreement among SALT caucus members. Malliotakis pushed for an income restriction on SALT deductions, a measure that made it into the tax bill but which other blue-state Republicans such as LaLota decried earlier this month as “another punitive measure.”
Members’ various views on the specifics of SALT have created a rift between Malliotakis and most others who are pushing for a higher SALT cap, including LaLota and New York Reps. Elise Stefanik, Andrew Garbarino and Lawler, and California Rep. Young Kim.
Where Malliotakis said she’s “happy with” the $30,000 amount — though adding, “If we can get more, that would be great,” — the others in the SALT caucus are staunch opponents. The four New York Republicans released a statement last week calling the $30,000 figure “insulting” and unequivocally rejecting it.
For weeks, all eyes have been on blue-state Republicans, and how they would negotiate with a party leadership beholden to its most conservative faction. As the bill progresses through the legislative process, the SALT caucus hasn’t set forward a unified red line. Even so, outside of Malliotakis, the group has shown a willingness to criticize leadership.
Democrats meanwhile, are calling to remove the SALT cap entirely by letting it expire in 2026 or raising it to a much larger maximum such as $80,000.
It’s a move that would hardly get support from House GOP members who are already blasting the reconciliation bill for not including enough cuts, but Democrats have touted it to underscore the fact that the Republican-backed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed by Trump in 2017, instituted the current $10,000 SALT cap.
Lawler told reporters that going in such a direction would lead to “disaster” and “the largest tax increase in American history.”
Even as tensions flared up this week, the SALT caucus maintains it is making progress with its negotiations.
Their assurances come even as Johnson suggested that it could take until after the weekend to strike a deal, adding several days to the Wednesday target he initially suggested to reporters this week.
“I think we are making progress,” Lawler said. “Are we there yet? No. Are we getting closer? Sure.”
“I think that we can strike a deal where everyone is somewhat happy,” Malliotakis told NOTUS. “We’ve just gotta finish the job.”
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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