Cuomo: Florida Gets Welfare From New York - WSJ letter
Cross posting from Editorial
(I did not bother to read Scott's op-ed, but like the reply)
Regarding former Florida governor, now Sen., Rick Scott’s “Why New Yorkers Flee For Florida” (op-ed, March 21): Sen. Scott argues in support of the 2017 tax reform’s unprecedented cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductibility. This represents a tax increase of more than $600 billion nationally, with dire implications for New York. The senator claims that the cap “stops high-tax states from burdening the rest of us with their irresponsible decisions.”
New York doesn’t add to Florida’s bills—we pay them. In 2017 Florida took nearly $46 billion more from the federal government than it contributed, making it the No. 2 “grantee” state in the nation. New York is the No. 1 “donor” state. In 2017 we gave the federal government $36 billion more than we got back. The curtailment of SALT deductibility takes this gross imbalance and supercharges it, costing New Yorkers another $14 billion each year. But SALT was never about economics. It was about politics. Its explicit purpose was to weaponize the federal tax system against predominantly Democratic states. The 12 states most hurt by the limitations on deductibility all voted against President Trump in 2016.
The GOP is supposed to be the party of federalism and “states’ rights.” Since the Civil War, when President Lincoln signed the first federal income tax into law, the federal government has explicitly recognized state and local governments’ right to tax their own jurisdictions. But this new federal law imposes a tax on state and local taxes—the first double tax in our history, hampering states’ ability to make their own fiscal decisions. The GOP also purports to oppose policies of “redistribution” but President Trump and the federal government are the true redistributors of wealth—not from rich to poor, but from blue states to red states.
Under my administration, New York has made historic strides in fiscal discipline: A 2% cap on state spending growth, the lowest middle-class tax rate since 1947, the lowest corporate tax rate since 1968, the lowest manufacturers’ tax rate since 1917. Today, every New Yorker pays a lower tax rate than when I took office. We have capped property tax growth at 2%, a provision that has saved New Yorkers $25 billion. We have added over a million private-sector jobs, all while making historic investments in infrastructure, health care and education. If Sen. Scott wants to return to New York the $36 billion that we give to Florida every year, I’ll end my campaign to reinstate SALT deductibility.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Albany, N.Y.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cuomo-florida-gets-welfare-from-new-york-11554152628 (paid subscription)
= new reply since forum marked as read
One version has the Mississippi River turning into an inland waterway up through the center of the US.
