WH: We don’t ♥ NY

Budget boss rips state in push for tax reform

President Trump’s budget director on Tuesday fiercely defended the elimination of state and local tax deductions in the proposed federal tax overhaul — saying the White House can’t be blamed because people are fleeing New York over high taxes.

“Is it the federal government’s fault that New York tax is so high that they are driving people out of the state?” Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in an interview with regional reporters.

Mulvaney pushed back on Gov. Cuomo’s assertion that removing the state and local tax deductions would be such a death blow that wealthier taxpayers would leave the state.

Mulvaney, who as a South Carolina congressman was a Tea Party darling, said people are already relocating from New York.

“I don’t think it’s up to the federal government to save New York from its bad decisions,” he said.

The House this week is set to vote on a reform plan that would eliminate state and local incometax deductions on itemized federal tax returns and cap property-tax deductions at $10,000.

The Senate’s version would hit New Yorkers even harder by completely eliminating the property-tax benefit.

Irate New Yorkers point out that the state already subsidizes the rest of the country. In 2015, New York contributed $48 billion more in taxes to the federal government than it received in federal spending — the largest negative balance of any state, according to a Rockefeller Institute of Government study.

“Mulvaney should know better, and he does,” Cuomo said in a statement.

“I’ll make it simple: Just give New York the $48 billion we send to Washington that makes us the number-one donor state in the nation and he and the president can do whatever they want with state and local tax deductibility.”

Mulvaney, though, said fairness should be measured on an individual level. Someone from his home state of South Carolina should not be paying more in federal tax than an identical individual in New York, he argued.

“If I’m paying more federal tax than you are, I’m subsidizing your high-tax existence” he said. “As a taxpayer, I don’t really care what my state gets. What I care about is my taxes.”