Bernie Sanders Is Right: Biden's Build Back Better Is a Gift to the Rich

By Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast

I’m with Bernie—the SALT cap is way too high.

A little history is in order here to understand why some Democrats in high-tax states like New Jersey and New York are so intent on restoring SALT. Before President Trump took a wrecking ball to SALT, there was no ceiling on how much you could deduct in state and local taxes on your federal income tax return. Limiting the deduction to $10,000 “will kill New York,” then-Governor Andrew Cuomo said in 2017.

That was the point, it turned out. Trump wanted to punish the blue states that didn’t vote for him by constraining those governors from raising taxes if their constituents weren’t able to write off those taxes.

Now, in order to win the votes of House Democratic moderates who represent high-earning districts mainly in New York and New Jersey, the Build Back Better bill takes the cap on deducting state and local taxes from $10,000 to $80,000, an eight-fold increase that would give millionaires and billionaires a big fat tax break that if enacted into law goes against everything progressives in the House and Bernie Sanders in the Senate have been fighting for in the battle for income equality and fair taxation.