Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday called for the Senate to eliminate the cap on state and local tax, or SALT, deductions, which House Democrats included in their latest coronavirus relief bill.
“We need to cushion the blow of this virus,” Schumer said during a news conference in Lake Success on Long Island, according to Newsday. “The SALT cap hurts people affected by the virus. It hurts so many of the metropolitan areas like New York and so we want to change it and we will.”
The tax law passed in 2017 placed a cap on the SALT deduction at $10,000 in an attempt to offset the tax cuts included in the legislation. Multiple Republican members of the House from high-tax states like New York, New Jersey and California voted against the bill because of this measure.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., criticized the provision eliminating the SALT cap in remarks on the floor of the Senate last month, which he claimed "would change tax law to provide massively expensive gifts to wealthy people in high-tax blue states."
Schumer promised to make eliminating the SALT deduction cap a priority for Democrats if the party wins control of the Senate in the upcoming elections.
"I want to tell you this: If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate it forever," he said. "It will be dead, gone and buried."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.