Blue-state House Republicans threatening to tank the budget reconciliation package over the state and local tax deduction provision say they’re immune to pressure from President Donald Trump and his cabinet.
A meeting with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went nowhere Thursday morning, and several members of the SALT Caucus came out of the confab saying they wouldn’t be swayed by the administration.
“I think everybody wants the deal. I want the deal too, but I work for the constituents of New York’s 1st District who desperately need to fix the SALT mistake that was made in 2017,” Rep. Nick LaLota said after meeting with Bessent when NOTUS asked if he’s feeling pressure from the president.
Bessent has hosted talks on SALT this week as GOP leadership scrambles to meet a July 4 deadline for getting the bill to the president’s desk.
But if there’s been a push at those meetings from Bessent and others in Trumpworld to wrap up negotiations on the provision, the SALT Caucus members — a group of Republicans from high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California, some of whom are in vulnerable seats come 2026 — won’t admit it.
Rep. Mike Lawler simply responded with an emphatic “no” when NOTUS asked whether Bessent, Trump or others have pressured SALT Caucus members to move faster or give in to their opponents’ demands.
The lawmakers’ insistence that they’re sticking to their guns came after caucus members shot down a SALT proposal that someone from Bessent’s team presented to them Thursday morning, LaLota told reporters.
LaLota did not disclose specific numbers in the proposal but told reporters it kept the deduction cap at $40,000 and reduced the income threshold that would allow taxpayers to qualify for the deduction. In the proposal, the year-to-year inflation adjustment on the deduction cap also went down, LaLota added. The offer is valued at $200 billion, as compared to the original SALT Caucus deal, valued at $344 billion.
California Rep. Young Kim, also a SALT Caucus member, called the Thursday morning offer a “no-go.”
The offer is largely aligned with proposals that Sen. Markwayne Mullin, the main liaison between the SALT Caucus and the Senate, and other senators have floated as a potential compromise. In addition to involvement from Trump’s cabinet, SALT Caucus members are also facing pressure from the Senate, where Republican leadership is signaling that a deal needs to happen soon.
On other fronts, members of Congress have seemingly given into pressure from the treasury secretary as the clock ticks on finishing the tax bill.
Bessent said in an X post Tuesday afternoon that he “asked the Senate and House to remove the Section 899 protective measure from consideration in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill.” The lead GOP tax writers in each chamber stripped that measure, known as the “revenge tax” because it would give the president unilateral authority to levy retaliatory taxes on foreign countries, out of the bill shortly after.
It’s a trend that’s come up time and time again in the Trump 2.0 era in Congress. When the House voted last month on its version of the reconciliation bill, it was calls from the president and other White House officials that finally got naysayers on board. In February, a precarious vote on the budget made it over the finish line after Speaker Mike Johnson and other House GOP leaders employed last-minute help from Trump. And when that budget framework came back to the House with changes from the Senate, Trump once again stepped in to get enough lawmakers on board.
But the administration isn’t having the same luck with SALT’s biggest defenders.
Rather, Bessent’s involvement in negotiations has been a catalyst for at least one SALT Caucus member to completely write off negotiations with those in Trump’s orbit for now.
“I’m not even going to go to any of their future fake negotiations,” LaLota told reporters, confirming that he was not planning to attend another meeting with Bessent and his team scheduled for Thursday, just hours after the previous one. “They should be careful with how far they push us … we’re going to fight our way out.”
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Shifra Dayak is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.