US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is raising the proposed SALT (State and Local Tax) deduction cap to $40,000 in hopes of winning over moderates as lawmakers continue to deliberate over President Trump's so-called "big, beautiful" tax bill.
Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul explains how this change shifts pressure onto fiscal conservatives ahead of key votes on the spending plan.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
House Speaker Mike Johnson appears set to unveil changes to President Trump's quote-unquote big beautiful bill today, including a more generous deduction for state and local taxes. Here with more is Yahoo Finance's Ben Werschkul. So where are we, Ben, in this whole process?
Yeah, Julie. So we're we're at crunch time here in Washington. Um, with a lot of issues. You mentioned the salt, the salt deduction was a big change um, today. Uh, it's going to $40,000 in the in the in the bill from it's $10,000 annually currently. Johnson's initial offer was $30,000 and he's upped it further to $40,000. We have signs that the salt, these kind of salt, the salt caucus is in favor of that, so it may help take that issue on off the table. But it's shifted the focus to fiscal conservatives, who are meeting with Trump this hour at the White House to try to work out their their range of issues there. And this is the largest and the most um, kind of immovable, so far at least, group um, in all these negotiations with way more than enough members to sink this bill if they want to. And it comes as Trump and Johnson want to have a a vote on this as soon as tonight. Um, the the issue on a policy front here for Johnson is that giving into the fiscal conservatives on some of the additional cuts they need, uh, they want on issues like Medicaid could sink the bill with moderates. So what the playbook appears to be right now on this group is essentially hardball. So I think this is a meeting that's going to have a lot of arm twisting, a lot of forcing. Um, the group, this Freedom Caucus, went into this meeting saying the bill's not ready, they're not going to vote yes today. They're they want they want more days to negotiate. We'll see what the tone is coming out of the meeting um, in the in the next hour or so.
All right, Ben. Thank you. Appreciate it.
