‘The last people who need help right now are the well-off…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Even some liberals oppose House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s efforts to roll back parts of President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
Pelosi hinted in an interview with the New York Times last weekend that congressional Democrats would try to retroactively reverse the tax law’s $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction in the next Wuhan virus relief package.
But liberals pointed out that getting rid of the SALT-deduction cap would disproportionately hurt the lower and middle classes while benefiting the ultra-wealthy.
“The priority for Speaker Pelosi at this time should not be a tax break for the well-to-do. Repealing the SALT cap would be a huge mistake. The last people who need help right now are the well-off taxpayers who would be affected by this change,” said Morris Pearl, the chairman of Patriotic Millionaires, a Democratic activist group.
Huffington Post reporter Emily Peck similarly pointed out how “unbelievable” Pelosi’s plan is.
This is almost unbelievable. Of all the things to do to help people; she wants to… give upper middle class people a tax break. Ok, that seems unnecessary, but also it wouldnt arrive until NEXT YEAR? Pelosi Floats New Stimulus Plan: Rolling Back SALT Cap https://t.co/TsERxw1M8E
— Emily Peck (@EmilyRPeck) March 31, 2020
And Seth Hanlon, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress, said that Pelosi’s plan to “tailor” the SALT reduction to middle class workers is simply not realistic because “relatively few middle-class people claim SALT.”
“Democrats want to be the party of working people, prioritizing tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers, even in blue states, is not the right thing to do,” Pearl explained. “We already have too many politicians in Washington whose answer to every problem is to cut taxes for the rich.”