Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
To our next guest who is joining us now live from Capitol Hill, Republican Congressman Nicole Mallytakis of New York, who Zach just mentioned, is with us now here on Bloomberg TV and Radio. Congressman, welcome back to Balance of Power. You've obviously made it back safely to Washington from mar A Lago. I know you told Zach and have expressed that really this is about getting to two hundred and eighteen and whatever number it is on SALT that can
get the requisite votes. But is there a floor and a ceiling, some kind of parameter around what that number actually realistically could look like you could share with us.
Yeah. Look, I think your reporter got it just right. The low end, it would be doubling it from ten to twenty. On the high end, it would be one hundred thousand for individual I quite frankly think that is a little too high, in particular if we're looking at target and middle class families, I think it could be
really more between the twenty and the sixty range. And this is just me knowing all the information I know as a member of Ways and Means and looking at the big piece, big picture, the big puzzle, knowing all the other pieces that need to fit into this equation. I think the idea here is to get some type of relief from the federal level for our constituents in New York, New Jersey, California, because their mayors and governors, quite frankly, are abusing them. They keep increasing their taxes.
The property tax levy in New York City goes up year after year after year. It's the only municipality in the state that does not have a two percent cap, and that's unfortunate. This problem could obviously be resolved by our mayor and governor if they were just to freeze property taxes or lower the personal income tax rate, as President Trump did in TCJA in twenty seventeen. But you have to remember there's the other pieces. You have the standard deduction that was doubled. You had the child tax
credit that was doubled. You had the Alternative Minimum tax which went away completely for the middle class, which was really crushing them and it actually prevented them from ben fitting from salt. So we can't have the AMT come back as part of this. I've made that very clear and so we're working with all these different pieces, not to mention the corporate stuff and the R and D tax credit and bonus appreciation, so many other pieces that are going to be part of this package.
Fascinating, Congresswoman that you're also exploring some more creative ideas here. The reporting that we're reading coming out of the mar A Lago conference quotes you to suggests maybe we increase the deduction. If your state freezes or lowers the tax rate, maybe the deduction goes even higher. Now, this is getting interesting, and I wonder what the reaction that you got was from your fellow lawmakers, from the President elect, and maybe even from Democrats who you've floated this to.
Well, I think my colleagues actually really like that idea, because part of the problem is we want to give relief. But if we give taxpayers money back with one hand, and the governor and mayor come along and just raise taxes and take it with the other, that's a problem and the taxpayer ends up losing at the end of
the day. And so how do we incentivize, how do we change behavior, How do we hold the mayors and the governors that are treating taxpayers like ATMs accountable, and so we have to see if this can legally be done. That's the big question. Can we let's say double this deduction and then say maybe it goes up, it triples or quadruples if your state takes action to freeze put a cap on property taxes and freeze income taxes or reduce them. You know, these are ideas that we're tossing around.
I've also said, maybe we want to limit the property tax portion of this deduction for primary residences, right so that could actually target the people that truly need it. I think there's a lot of different ideas being floated around, and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee, we are obviously crunching the numbers, but we have to wait until the Budgets Committee gives us the top line and the reconciliation instructions to really figure out how to
put together this Rubik's cube. And that's you know, in the meantime, would between the math and trying to figure out what our options are and we'll go from there.
Well as we talk about the kind of structure of reconciliation. Congressman, was there consensus built at mar Alago this week? Und around the one bill or two idea or is this still a live debate? What messaging were your you and your colleagues delivering to the president elect? What was he saying in return?
But I think the majority of our membership, certainly all the members of the House Ways and Means Committee, want to see one bill. And if you saw what happened in the last week of session right last year, that's the reason why we need one bill. It's hard to build consensus when you have such a slim majority. And the last time they did two reconciliation bills, it was under Gingridge in nineteen ninety seven and he had a
much larger majority. You have to remember TCJA there were thirteen no Republican votes.
We don't have that luxury.
We have one. We have a majority of one. So we have to build consensus, and I think the best way to do that is to put the different pieces that members care about together, the border security measures, the energy production measures. Those will satisfy some of the border states, the energy producing states, and you have the salt states get something with our salt relief. And overall we support as a conference, we support tax cuts, we support border security,
we support American energy dominance. So let's just drill down and negotiate with each other on those finer details of each of these and get one bill passed so we get to the two eighteen. If you kick tax to the end of the year in a separate package, I very much fear that it will expire and America will see four trillion dollars in tax increases. We cannot afford to allow that to happen. It's too risky to do it later on in the year and not upfront with this first package.
Well, congress Woman, that's as long as we've ever gone in a conversation. I think before you mentioned the border, So let's get to it. There is a thought out there on Grover Norquist suggested it a little bit earlier in the broadcast that Donald Trump's plans to issue some one hundred executive orders, many of them aimed at the border, will give you breathing room to actually craft a single bill that would include border security and the tax issues
that we're talking about. Is that the way you're looking at this, Let the President handle the border out of the gate. We'll back him up with legislation when it's done being written here and our debate concludes on the Hill.
Yeah, well, you know, the Senate has made the argument that we need to do too, because we want to do the border wins early on. There's a way we can achieve that. First, as you say, the President can issue the executive orders, and he will do that to undo the policies of the Biden administration. But we've also passed legislation. Just the other day, we passed a Lake in Riley Act, which would require those who commit certain
crimes to be detained and deported. And we're working through pieces of legislation that can get bipartisan support and the sixty votes needed in the Senate to get that out the door and put it on the president's desk for when he arrives next week. So I think we can score those border victories early and then really when it comes to the reconciliation, it has to have a fiscal implication, right, So we can't necessarily do Lake and Riley Act in reconciliation.
But we can increase border patrol, we can increase technology, we can put some things in there that would help with the deportation of criminals, and maybe adding judges to hear these asylum cases. Faster, so I think we can achieve both things here. And the bottom line is a president really just wants to get it done. I don't think he cares at the end of the day on whether it's one or two. I think he just wants to get the policies done that will get America back
on track. We've made the case that it should be one bill, and I think he sees the merit of one bill. As I said, considering what happened at the end of last year where we had so much back and forth within our conference, well, and part of.
That saga at the end of last year Congressman was a question over whether the debt ceiling should be lifted or abolished entirely before Trump takes office. How was that interplaying in the conversations this weekend. When is that going to happen, and what legislation and what could potentially be the trade off is we've seen reporting that it might be debt sealing in exchange for wildfire relief in California.
Well, you know, interestingly enough, a lot of members believe that the debt limit piece of this is probably the most complicated because that's where you see the most friction Within our conference, there are some members who never voted to increase the debt limit, and we have to understand that the debt limit is money that's already been spent that we're paying the bill. We don't want to prevent a default. So the responsible thing to do is to
address that debt limit and do it before June. I think we're just going to look for any vehicle where we can get it. It could be with disaster aid, it could be within the reconciliation, it could be within the government funding mechanism, you know, the federal budget. So we'll see, we'll see what vehicle where we can get it. But it does need to be addressed before June. The
sooner we can do it, the better. Let's get it out of the way, since it's the most contentious peace and then get to the other real policy issues that the Americans people have been waiting for. Right They want to get this economy back on track. They want to see the tax cuts extended and enhanced. They want to see our border secure and people who are here legally committing crimes deported, and they want to see us lower those energy costs and produce more energy domestically.
Congresswoman with regard to the border. While you're with us here in our remaining couple of moments, a warning from Immigrations and custom Enforcement. Without emergency funding, they could be forced to release tens of thousands of immigrants, including some deemed to be public safety threats. We've talked a lot about the number of migrants being held in hotels, for instance, in places like New York City. Are you in touch
with ICE and with border patrol on this matter? Would Congress be there to prevent the release of people dangerous to Americans?
Well, I have not heard about this. If there's an issue with the funding, because the funding is there for the next uh you know, to the end of March. I think what they need to do is actually find a way to shift the funding so instead of housing individuals uh and transporting individuals into America's cities, we're actually deporting them and repatriating them. Uh. And I and if there are committing crimes and they don't have legitimate asylum claims.
So I think that we met with Tom Hollman about this. I mean, particularly New York City has been destroyed, uh, you know, by havoc being waked by illegal immigrants, gang members, drug traffickers, people who are bad, dangerous people. They've they've committed murder, they've committed robberies, they've committed all sorts of crimes in our city, and we need to get them
out of our city and our country. And so the question really has been how does the incoming administration legally Is there a way for them to shift some of the funny Monday money but has actually been used to provide incentives and house these individuals and give them h free services to actually remove them from our country. And that's I think what the incoming administration is gonna have to address when they get there next week.
From New York's eleventh District, Nicole malli Otaka is great to see you, Congresswoman. We thank you