Andrew Cuomo: Trump’s Tax Cut ‘Dagger in the Heart of New York and California’

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told CNN’s New Day on Thursday morning that President Donald Trump’s new tax reforms are “a dagger in the heart of New York and California” because they cap the state and local tax (SALT) deduction.

Cuomo told CNN that Republicans had said: “Let’s pillage the blue [states] to give to the red.”

Currently, the SALT deduction allows federal taxpayers to deduct the taxes they pay to state and local authorities from their federally taxable income. That has insulated wealthy taxpayers in high-tax states (typically governed by Democrats) from the profligacy of their state and local governments, because they have been able to share the burden of paying for those high taxes with everyone else in the country, to the tune of nearly $100 billion in 2015.

That has led Cuomo and California’s Governor Jerry Brown to attack the new tax law. Last week, Cuomo issued an emergency executive order to help taxpayers in his state pay some of next year’s property taxes this year — which also would allow the state to capture taxes for 2018 based on current property values, rather than risking that values might drop after the deduction is capped.

But the IRS weighed in on Wednesday, warning that 2018 property taxes might only be allowable under certain limited circumstances.

Cuomo also told CNN that capping the SALT deduction would be bad for the economy because New York and California are the “economic engines” of the country.

All of Senate’s Republicans voted for the tax reform bill. Among House Republicans who did not, most were from New York and New Jersey. Two — Reps. Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher — were from California.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.