The Trump tax flip-flop that could help Republicans win the House

Donald Trump’s surprising reversal on a contentious piece of his own signature tax law won’t help him win any swing states — but some Republicans believe it could help them hold the House.

After personal lobbying from at least three endangered GOP lawmakers, Trump is now vowing to restore a key tax break, known as the state and local tax deduction, or SALT, that remains a top voting issue with millions of middle- and upper-class Americans in states with onerous local taxes and a high cost of living.

Those voters don’t live in states that would help Trump win the Electoral College. Instead, the SALT cap affects a narrow but influential segment of voters in the well-heeled suburbs in blue states like New York, New Jersey and California — precisely the places that will determine the House majority this fall.

Republicans are well aware of the issue’s political potency: Democrats took control of the House in 2018 thanks to some of these very districts where candidates, such as Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) and Andy Kim (D-N.J.), ran on pledges to restore the deduction. Earlier this year, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), nicknamed “Mr. SALT” for his devotion to restoring the tax break, won back a GOP seat on Long Island.

But now the former president, who’s responsible for the policy in the first place, is flipping the script. And vulnerable GOP members in those blue-state battleground districts plan to use Trump’s commitment to win over swing voters.

"By his appearance on Long Island, it's evident that he understands that while some don't consider New York to be a battleground state for him, he acknowledges that it's a battleground state for control of the House," Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.) said, adding that the New York GOP delegation has pushed the issue aggressively, including putting salt shakers in front of "important people" at fundraisers.

That lobbying campaign extended from the halls of Congress to Trump himself.

“Every opportunity I've had to speak with the president or to the president, SALT has been part of that conversation,” said Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-N.Y.), who represents the western Long Island district where the rally was held. “Just as I've done here on Capitol Hill with leadership and our colleagues.”

And it comes at a critical time for Republicans, whose internal polling suggests all of their incumbents in New York retain a viable path to victory, according to three people familiar with the numbers, granted anonymity to discuss private data. Senior Republicans are even hopeful about Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.), whose Syracuse-area seat was widely considered unwinnable earlier this summer.

Democrats need only a handful of seats to retake the House, and their clearest path to power runs through the 16 GOP-held districts that Joe Biden carried in 2020. Ten of them are in New York, New Jersey and California. Republican incumbents in those states will need to win over voters on local issues, such as taxes and crime, while stressing their independence from their party on other issues, such as abortion rights.

In New York, Reps. Marc Molinaro and Mike Lawler face tough reelections, along with D’Esposito and Williams. In New Jersey, Democrats are targeting Republican Rep. Tom Kean Jr. And in Southern California, Reps. Michelle Steel, Young Kim and Mike Garcia all hold Biden-won districts.

Their Democratic opponents plan to aggressively remind voters that it was Trump who instituted the cap. Laura Gillen, who is challenging D’Esposito, called Trump’s switch “a pre-election stunt” that would never become a reality.

“It appears that Trump and my opponent, Anthony D'Esposito, think that we're going to have some kind of collective amnesia across the district and across the country to forget that Trump is the one who imposed this punitive tax policy to punish blue states because they didn't vote for him,” she said.

Trump has discussed raising the SALT deduction in conversations with economic advisers, according to one of them, Stephen Moore. During a meeting this summer, Trump and his campaign talked about potentially raising the deduction cap as a way to help the middle class.

When Trump posted this week about restoring the tax break — and then doubled down on the vow at his rally on Long Island — those members cheered.

"I know that was a very welcome tweet," Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-N.Y.), the former chair of his state's GOP, said of Trump’s post. "They've all run on tackling these problems, which disproportionately hurt New Yorkers."

In the House, a group of those vulnerable Republicans in blue states have been notably outspoken in demanding a policy change from their party leadership, including Speaker Mike Johnson. And many have been blunt about what they see as the potential political consequences.

Garcia, who holds one of the GOP’s toughest seats, said he confronted Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith earlier this year directly about how a failure to recognize the SALT problem would propel Republicans back into the minority.

“‘You can either do this now and influence it while we’re in the majority — or if we do nothing on SALT, good luck shaping this when you’re the ranking member of Ways and Means,’” Garcia recalled telling Smith. He said he first told his GOP colleagues that they needed to “own this SALT issue” back in 2022, as the party plotted its agenda shortly after seizing the majority.

Instead, just weeks from Election Day, House Republicans had done little to propel the issue forward — until Trump’s rally on Long Island this week.

Beyond lifting the SALT cap, Trump has also floated cutting taxes on Social Security benefits, overtime pay and tips — moves widely seen as a populist play for voters, such as seniors on fixed incomes or service and hospitality workers in Las Vegas. But the SALT cut primarily affects middle- and upper- class families. In rural or working-class districts, even those in blue states, many residents don't take the SALT deduction because it wouldn't make financial sense at their income level.

To Democrats, the idea that the person who created the policy would swoop in to undo it is laughable. They were quick to cast doubt on Trump's commitment to ending the SALT cap, which he made in a Truth Social post that vowed to “get SALT back” but contained no specifics. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) likened it to an "arsonist volunteering at the fire department."

"It's another piece of bullshit on top of a pile of bullshit," said Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.). "He's pathologically lying."

Both parties face internal pushback on a legislative fix. That will make it a major headache for party leaders trying to pass a tax rewrite next year, when this deduction — and many others — are set to sunset.

In the GOP, plenty of fiscal hawks, such as Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, do not support raising the current SALT cap. It's an issue that breaks more strongly along geographical lines than partisan ones. Liberal Democrats outside of the affected states, for instance, have been wary of unraveling the cap because it disproportionately affects wealthier families.

In the high-tax states, both parties blame the other for failing to fix it when they had the House majority. New York Republicans countered that Democrats had total control of the federal government for the first two years of Biden’s administration and did not muscle through a change.

"They had the majority in two houses and the president, and they didn't touch it," said Molinaro. "I don't think we ought to be lectured to about the SALT deduction from them."

Meridith McGraw contributed to this report.