Blaz fed up

Calls Trump tax plan biggest threat to city

THERE MIGHT BE an election Tuesday, but in his major speech before the polls open, Mayor de Blasio was more focused on a national policy — President Trump’s tax plan.

“The danger to New York City isn’t here. It’s 200 miles down I-95,” de Blasio (photo inset) said in a speech to the Association for a Better New York, after boasting about his pre-K, housing and job creation initiatives. “The danger to New York City and to our growth and to our potential is a series of policies emanating from Washington.”

And chief among those threats, he told the influential group of business leaders, was Trump’s tax plan — which he said will help the rich but hurt the middle class by removing the option to deduct state and local taxes.

“President Trump’s tax plan takes dead aim at New York City,” he said. “It would undermine the success that we have achieved, and despite the hype, it would undermine the middle class in this city, and I would say all over the country.”

In a segment of the speech that could be mistaken for an Iowa stump speech, de Blasio argued that removing the deductions — which are especially important in areas like New York that have typically higher local taxes — would mean double taxation and financial pain for people all over the country, not just in “blue states” that didn’t vote for Trump.

“It’s not just a few blue states. It’s states in the heartland, it’s states all over the country that would be negatively affected,” de Blasio said. “And that realization is coming to bear whether you live on the Atlantic or the Pacific or the Rio Grande or Lake Michigan, there are people who are going to be hurt by this tax plan.”

Hizzoner praised the state’s representatives in Congress — and gave a shoutout to three New York Republican congressmen who have opposed the deal in its present form, Staten Island’s Dan Donovan and Long Islanders Lee Zeldin and Peter King.

After the remarks, city Controller Scott Stringer said he wasn’t so sure the only threat to New York City comes from Washington.

“I think on Wednesday the reality will set in that we have some big issues before us and this government is going to have to start addressing some real issues. There’s a lot of good happening in this city but there’s a lot of people out there who are struggling,” he said, citing affordability and the homeless crisis among them.