One Democrat who broke ranks with Clinton in the 1990s was Lipinski’s father, Bill, who represented the suburban Chicago district before his son. The elder Lipinski told the Chicago Tribune at the time that, “it’s not easy for me to vote against a Democratic president. But do I feel disloyalty? No.”
Democrats like the Lipinskis have all but disappeared from Congress as gerrymandered districts and hyper-partisanship have resulted in more party-line votes.
“It’s going to be a really big test if Democrats raise taxes on those who are more wealthy. I’m sure Republicans are hoping that happens and that it brings some of those party-flipping districts over to them,” Dan Lipinski said of Biden’s bill.
SALT In The Wound
The political realignment has also put Democrats in a new position of bargaining to restore a tax break for their wealthy constituents before they’ll agree to support a higher income-tax rate.
Trump’s 2017 tax bill capped the annual federal tax deduction for state and local taxes—a popular write-off with taxpayers in high-tax, high-property-value states—at $10,000.
Many Democrats in Congress who won formerly Republican districts campaigned on restoring that deduction. It was a particularly salient issue in New York and New Jersey, where Democrats were able to flip seven GOP seats in 2018.
“I’m not voting for any change in the tax code whatsoever unless there’s the restoration of the SALT tax deduction. I’m laying that chit on the table,” Suozzi said.
Nearly two dozen other Democrats, including 17 New York Democrats and New Jersey Representatives Bill Pascrell, Josh Gottheimer, Mikie Sherrill and Malinowski, have set the bar in the same place. But they’ve also suggested the issue is important enough that they would trade a higher income tax rate if it included more broad-based tax relief, like lifting the SALT cap.
So it’s possible that the solution would be to raise the cap but not eliminate it entirely. “We have to do something about SALT or else I can’t be for it,” Malinowski said. “I think the administration understands that.”
—With assistance from Laura Davison and Bill Allison.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.