The House will vote this month on a bill to make permanent the individual tax cuts enacted in December, Republican leaders said Wednesday.
Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will not wait for the post-election “lame duck” session to take up the measure, despite opposition from some Republicans who oppose a provision capping state tax deductions.
The bill will be “on the floor” in September for a vote, McCarthy and Ryan said.
“We will make those tax cuts permanent,” Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., said. Under the law signed by President Trump in December, the cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025.
In order to ensure the bill can garner 218 votes, the House Ways and Means Committee, which plans to mark up the measure next week, could make changes that would either sunset the caps on state and local tax deductions (SALT), or otherwise reform it to accommodate high-tax states like New York and California, one GOP lawmaker told the Washington Examiner.
The law now places a $10,000 limit on SALT deductions.
“I think we can get there,” Rep. Tom Reed, R-N.Y., said. “We want to make sure members have input and send the message back to their states that hey, we are listening.”
Ryan and McCarthy touted the tax cuts in a closed-door meeting Wednesday morning, the first gathering of GOP lawmakers since leaving town in July for the summer recess.
The legislation faces backlash from Republicans representing states with high property and local taxes.
Rep. Frank LoBiondo, of New Jersey, is among the Republicans who voted against the tax cut bill in 2017 because of the caps.
He told the Washington Examiner he will vote against making the cuts permanent unless the caps are removed.
“If we fix SALT I would take a look at it,” LoBiondo, who is retiring this year, said Wednesday.
