Office of Budget and Management Chief Mick Mulvaney is using tax reform to "screw" the state of New York, Rep. Pete King said Wednesday, while strongly pushing against plans to remove state and local tax deductions from a tax reform bill that will come under consideration in the House soon.
"My real objection to Mulvaney is he was yesterday saying how if there is a bad impact on New York, that's New York's fault," the New York Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "This is what Mulvaney [was] doing back in Congress . . . We've been subsidizing him and his constituents for years and he's using this opportunity to screw us."
King further complained that Mulvaney, when in office, "led the fight against the [Superstorm] Sandy relief money due to New York. He never supported the 9/11 healthcare bill for New York and now he seems to use every opportunity to take shots at New York. In his original budget, he cut dramatically the Homeland Security funding."
Mulvaney also was scheduled to appear on the "Fox and Friends" program after King, but canceled his appearance for reasons that were not disclosed, co-anchor Sandra Smith commented.
However, Smith said, he is still saying that the he feels confident that the House bill will pass in its current form, even without King's vote or the efforts to save the deduction.
"They may have the votes," King responded. "I don't know what the vote count is. I hope they don't. If they do, they do."
King has been angry since earlier this week, when Mulvaney told reporters that New York and other high-tax states were putting a burden on states like his South Carolina because of the tax deductions.
He further commented it would be New York's own fault when asked about the possibility that wealthy residents would leave rather than pay more taxes.
"Is it the federal government's fault that New York taxes are so high that they're driving people out of the state?" Mulvaney said, reports the Buffalo News.
"I don't defend everything that New York has done," King said, adding that New York would be better off if it was treated the way Mulvaney's home state of South Carolina is.
"We pay $48 billion every year to the federal government, more than we get back," said King. "We get 79 cents on the dollar. Mulvaney's state gets far more than that, 70 percent more than we do. If we have the same balance of payments to the federal government as Mulvaney does in South Carolina we wouldn't have the problems we have."
King said he has not changed his mind about voting against the House bill, and said that most of his fellow New York delegation likewise will vote against it if it eliminates the tax deductions.
"I can't speak for all of them, but I know that [Rep.] Dan Donovan is definitely no," he said. "Several others also. This again, we believe, will have a severe impact on New York, especially the downstate that we represent, where the property taxes and state income tax level is high, and so much of that would be lost."
If the bill is passed, statewide, New Yorkers would lose billions, said King.
"As far as my district , downstate New York the average home tax probably is somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000 as well as state income tax and local property tax, [and] $10,000 of that would be allowed," King said. "You have $15,000 to $20,000 they're losing in deductions. People tell you other pluses in the bill will make up for that. I haven't seen that yet. I would say most of the taxpayers in my district, a good number of them, would see their taxes go up because of this."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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