[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 145 (Wednesday, September 18, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6111-S6112]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               SALT Caps

  Mr. President, now on the SALT cap, in the long 8 years that Donald 
Trump has been in politics, one thing is beyond doubt: What Donald 
Trump says and what Donald Trump does are two very different things.
  Donald Trump says he fights for working people and then ushers in 
perhaps the most anti-worker administration in modern times as 
President.

[[Page S6112]]

  Donald Trump claims he is a ``leader on fertilization, IVF''--
whatever that means--but his MAGA Justices overturned Roe and cast 
women's reproductive care into chaos.
  Yesterday Donald Trump did it again, totally reversing himself, 
claiming that he will reverse the cap on State and local deductions. 
But Donald Trump must be suffering from selective amnesia because he 
was the one who took away people's SALT deductions in the first place. 
His tax bill did it--a dagger aimed at blue States that want to spend a 
little more to help people with housing and healthcare and education 
and transportation.
  All of a sudden, now that he is on Long Island, Donald Trump's 
selective amnesia kicks in, and he totally reverses himself on SALT. 
But we know Donald Trump. We know what his MO is. He is going to do 
nothing. He is simply trying to escape the anger of many families he 
upset when he placed those caps, which affect so many middle-class 
people, particularly in higher cost areas like Long Island.
  So he shows up in Long Island. Oh, he says he has changed his mind. 
And we know he will do nothing about it. Then, when some of his more 
rightwing people go to him and say ``You can't do it,'' he will say 
``OK.''
  So this is not only an empty promise, but it shows the hypocrisy of 
Donald Trump. For Donald Trump to pretend he has found religion on 
eliminating the SALT caps 2 months before an election, speaking in Long 
Island, is comical, is unserious, and it shows the lack of integrity 
that this man has. His promises carry about as much weight as Monopoly 
money.
  Remember, the SALT cap was one of the key parts of Donald Trump's own 
tax law. Congressional Republicans pushed the cap; he signed it. Donald 
Trump's own Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, called SALT a subsidy 
for States like New York, even though for decades New York paid tens of 
billions more in taxes than we received from the Federal Government. To 
this day, SALT caps remain in place because extreme Republicans have 
blocked any attempt to fix this defective policy.
  I have been a loud proponent of eliminating the SALT cap from the 
start. As long as I am leader, I will do everything in my power so that 
when these caps expire at the end of next year, they will not come 
back.
  Double taxing hard-working owners on Long Island, in the Hudson 
Valley, and across New York and many other States as well--largely blue 
States--is plainly unfair, and it could not have come up at a worse 
time than the last few years, with so much chaos caused by COVID and 
the economic turmoil it unleashed.

  So for families frustrated by the SALT cap, so many on Long Island--
firefighters, police officers, construction workers, who make good 
salaries--they have Donald Trump and congressional Republicans to thank 
for their pain.