Pelosi hopes to offer SALT relief in infrastructure package

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she hopes that Democrats can ease the current cap on state and local tax deductions as part of a larger infrastructure package.

Several House Democrats from New York and New Jersey say they wouldn’t back any other tax changes unless the state and local tax cap is repealed. Republicans put a $10,000 limit on state and local deductions in their 2017 tax law, H.R. 1 (115), a move that particularly hurt those states and Pelosi’s home base of California.

“I’m sympathetic to their position,” Pelosi said during a briefing with reporters, later adding: “Hopefully, we can get it into the bill.”

Long way to go: Still, the speaker also suggested that rank-and-file Democrats shouldn’t be drawing hard lines before negotiations over the infrastructure package. “I would withhold any comment about whether you're going to vote for a bill or not until you see what the bill is,” she said.

Pelosi and other Democrats like to note that the 2017 tax law’s benefits mostly went to the rich and to corporations. But repealing the SALT cap also would overwhelmingly help the wealthy — households earning at least seven figures a year would get the majority of the benefits, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.