In the News

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Springfield, pushed back Friday against President Donald Trump's assertion that Democrats did not want to work with Republicans on a bipartisan tax overhaul plan, calling such claims "not true." 

Neal, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, contended that the president misrepresented what happened when telling the New York Times he "would absolutely have done bipartisan" on the tax bill, if the minority party had asked. 

"That's not true," the congressman said in an interview. "Once again, I think that's misconstruing what happened."

Neal, who said he met with congressional Republicans, the president and Trump administration officials on the tax bill, offered that while it initially seemed as if lawmakers would move forward in a bipartisan manner to overhaul the tax code, that later changed. 

"I saw them in the Spring, (Trump's top economic advisor) Gary Cohn came to my office, I met with Secretary (Steve) Mnuchin and I told them we were in," he said. 

The Springfield Democrat argued that the shift in strategy came after Republicans decided they needed a "political victory."

"They proceeded toward a political victory rather than a policy victory, and they decided to go it alone because they had not accomplished anything in the first year," he said. "I think that's a misstatement of the facts. It was very clear from Day One -- I indicated that we were anxious to tackle tax reform."

The congressman further argued that the GOP tax overhaul plan is not "reform," but rather "a tax cut that is going to make the tax code more complicated."

Trump told the New York Times Thursday that he had been open to a bipartisan effort to overhaul the tax code and would have done something with the state and local tax deduction -- which filers in high tax, historically blue states often utilize -- if Democrats had come to him to work on the legislation. 

"We had a lot of people who fought very hard against, let's call it SALT. Had they come to me and said, look, we'll do this ... I could have done something with SALT. Or made it less severe. But they were very ineffective. They were very, very ineffective. You understand what I mean," he said, according to the newspaper.

"Had they come to me for a bipartisan tax bill, I would have gone to Mitch (McConnell), and I would have gone to the other Republicans, and we could have worked something out bipartisan. And that could've been either a change to SALT or knockout of SALT," Trump reportedly continued.

Neal, however, questioned Trump's claim, contending that Republicans needed the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction to help finance their tax cuts. 

"One of the things that always needs to be remembered in tax reform is, you need revenue," he said. "And, if you're going to cut that corporate rate from 35 percent  to 21 percent, if you're going to take the top rate from 39.7 percent to 37 percent and simultaneously try to conform to the budget guideline of $1.5 trillion -- all borrowed money, which is going to be closer to $2.3 trillion over 10 years as you pay down the debt -- then, you needed money to do this."

"They had to go some place for money, and I think right now they're seeing the pushback in these states across the country as people have discovered that their property tax deduction is capped," Neal continued.

Trump signed the $1.5 trillion GOP tax overhaul bill into law last week, capping his and the Republican-controlled Congress' first major legislative victory of 2017.

The bill's change to the state and local tax deduction has left some taxpayers -- including those in Massachusetts where many filers pay more than $10,000 in SALT -- scrambling to figure out how to maximize their tax benefits in the final days of 2017, with many rushing to city and town halls to prepay property tax bills.

The Internal Revenue Service announced Wednesday that taxpayers could prepay their 2018 property taxes only if they have already received a tax assessment from their local government.