Please let us know how you feel about pun-based headlines.

Salt in food is strange: if you don't have any, it's stale; but if you have too much, it's inedible.

Is the same true of SALT?

We will be talking taxes and TCJA almost unceasingly for the next few months, and if you are talking tax bill and TCJA you are talking SALT.

Let's summarize, although you already know this. The State And Local Tax (SALT) Deduction is exactly what it sounds like: it allows you to deduct your state and local taxes from your Federal income tax. This has been one of the few taxes that conservatives have historically hated. First: it's bad policy, because it's essentially a subsidy to tax-and-spend state-level policies—a subsidy from the Federal government to overspending states, a subsidy from low-tax and low-spending red states to blue state. It's also a huge regressive tax cut for high-income households in blue states, which tend to be exactly the kind of people who hate Republicans the most.

And so, when the SALT deduction was capped at $10,000 in TCJA, to try to come up with pay-fors in a bill full of red-ink, policy-minded conservatives cheered. Traditional conservatives cheered because SALT is economically inefficient. New Right-type conservatives cheered because they like the idea of making people who won't vote Republican pay higher taxes and generally get punished.

The only problem is: outside that bubble, a lot of people weren't cheered. A lot of Donald Trump's friends, who live in New York, weren't cheered. And although as a block high-income residents of blue states are overwhelmingly liberal, they do also include a small but vocal and influential minority of Republican donors, especially those who work on Wall Street (and, increasingly, in Silicon Valley). Also, aren't Republicans for tax cuts?

And thus, while campaigning, Donald Trump promised to get rid of the SALT cap. He campaigned hard on the issue.

More importantly, the House has a significant—and bipartisan—SALT Caucus. Why is this significant?

Because we have a very narrow House majority, and a lot of the marginal seats we want to flip, or keep, are in rural areas of states like…California and New York.

Look: as a matter of pure policy principle, SALT is bad policy, and if your correspondent was Emperor of America (soon…), it would go.

But we live in the real world. The President-elect wants something. And we want Republicans to keep the House in two years, and expand our majority.

How can we move forward on SALT without causing too much damage? Here's an interesting proposal: the SALT Marriage Penalty Elimination Act.

Currently, the cap is fixed at $10,000 for all filers, which creates a marriage penalty. The bill would therefore increase the cap to $20,000 for joint filers. It would only apply to households with AGI below $500,000 (which creates a tax cliff, but maybe that provision isn't necessary).

The Tax Foundation estimates that this would cost $12 billion per year. That's a modest amount these days.

Regardless of the specific numbers, the general idea of eliminating the marriage penalty in SALT as a way to give some SALT relief without breaking the bank seems to us like a potentially fruitful compromise.

Policy News You Need To Know

#Immigration — It looks like the Laken Riley Act will get a vote in the Senate, as at least nine Democrat (or Democrat-caucusing independents) have said they won't filibuster. That doesn't necessarily guarantee passage, though prospects are good.

SEE ALSO: Our analysis of the Laken Riley Act: The Laken Riley Act Is Very Good →

#Immigration — A key problem in implementing deportations of illegal immigrants is that sometimes their own countries don't want them back. (Maybe because they're not sending their best?) One such country is Venezuela: as Edgar Beltran points out in The American Conservative, the US does not have formal diplomatic relations with the nation of Venezuela, which complicates matters even more. He goes over Trump's options, which includes sending them back anyway (we did not know this was possible, but apparently it's been done in the past), and sending them to third countries, which Trump's team is already working on.

#Realignment — The dockworkers' union have reached a deal with the shipping industry, avoiding a strike—and their statement, which did not mention President Biden, did praise President-elect Trump.

#DOGE — Fascinating interview of Linda Miller of the Program Integrity Alliance on waste in Federal spending, which apparently totaled $1 trillion over the course of the Biden Administration. More here.

#Chyna #AmericanManufacturing — Trump to Further Limit Nvidia AI Chip Exports. Oh wait, that's the wrong headline. Here's the headline from Bloomberg: Biden to Further Limit Nvidia AI Chip Exports in Final Push.

#Chyna #AmericanManufacturing — A huge lithium deposit has been found on the border between Oregon and Nevada. This is important not just for financial reasons, but because China currently holds a quasi-monopoly on the mineral, which is used in crucial industries such as batteries and aerospace. The problem? You guessed it. Environmentalist groups are already preparing to sue to keep that lithium in the ground, Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute reports.

#DEI #LGBT — From the Daily Signal: "Biden Administration Admits Defeat by Withdrawing 7 Woke Rule Changes." These are rules covering everything from transgenders in sport to DEI requirements.

#LGBT — Speaking of: nearly half of male prisoners who identify as females have sex convictions, compared to less than 12% of the general male prison population, according to a new investigation by the Independent Women's Forum.

#Energy — Wind power is a bad source of energy, because it makes you dependent on the weather. This may seem obvious. And yet, it has to be said over and over again, and Andrew Stuttaford at National Review does it well.

#Telco — Remember "net neutrality"? It was a big issue on the left for many years, with the left arguing that without net neutrality, there could be—horror of horrors—censorship on the internet! Of course, we haven't had net neutrality for decades and what net neutrality advocates warned would happen didn't happen at all; meanwhile, we did get censorship, through means that are totally separate from what net neutrality is about, and it came from the left. Even talking about it feels very 2000s. And so, net neutrality is dead now. RIP. You won't be missed.