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Yankees president calls GOP tax plan a ‘swamp deal’ – Metro US

Yankees president calls GOP tax plan a ‘swamp deal’

Trump Tax Plan Randy Levine

Yankees president Randy Levine has told President Trump the GOP tax plan is a nonstarter.

On Monday, the longtime Trump supporter called it a “swamp deal” that favors the rich and asked the president to redo it.

“You ran on draining the swamp, not giving new life to it. You ran on tax cuts, not on the swamp’s idea of tax reform where special interests win,” Levine wrote in an open letter to Trump on Newsmax, a conservative news site. “This is a plan that helps Wall Street, hedge funds, private equity managers, real estate and oil and gas partnerships and individuals who disguise income as profits or distributions.”

Levine, a former deputy mayor for Rudy Giuliani, accused the president of turning his back on the middle-class voters who got him elected with provisions to dial back mortgage and property tax deductions.

“It is wrong to eliminate or limit property tax, mortgage and interest deductions,” Levine wrote. “Hardworking people have relied on them for years, this is how they afford to buy homes and build nest eggs in the equity of their homes. These proposals erode that equity, equity countless numbers of Americans rely on for retirement. These current bills will be extremely harmful to those who live in the suburbs and small towns.”

Eliminating the deductions would be particularly unfair to New York, Levine said: “Our state, New York, sends much more money to Washington than it receives back,” he continued. “In other words, states like New York, New Jersey and California are subsidizing other states, allowing them to lower state and local taxes or have none at all.”

Levine exhorted Trump to withdraw support for the Republican tax plan, saying “sometimes no deal is better than a bad deal.”

“The good news is there is still time to fix it and make it better and more efficient,” Levine wrote. “But as Yogi Berra said, Mr. President, ‘it is getting late early.’”

A vote on the plan may come as soon as Thursday. On Monday, Trump tweeted the bill was getting “great support” ​and said “With just a few changes, some mathematical, the middle class and job producers can get even more in actual dollars and savings and the pass through provision becomes simpler and really works well!”

 

Last week, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said the plan would cause 50 percent of Americans to pay higher taxes by 2027 because personal tax cuts phase out over time.

According to a November Washington Post-ABC News poll, 33 percent of Americans favor the GOP plan, while 50 percent oppose it.