Several rich friends of President Donald Trump’s started a campaign to coerce him into making changes to the GOP tax bill. They have personally told the president that the current plan would drive up their taxes and hurt his home state, The Washington Post reports.
Trump attended a fundraiser at the home of Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group. Real estate magnate Richard LeFrak, who the president said would be one of the main actors in his infrastructure push, was also present at the fundraiser. According to people familiar with the conversation between Trump and LeFrak, the real estate magnate asked the president about making changes in the bill.
This is not the first time that LeFrak has expressed concerns that the bill could be damaging for New York and its rich business class. He asked for changes that could help rich New Yorkers and his opinion was echoed by at least one other donor.
Trump has just told them that he understood them, but an attendee at the event said that Trump had been a little vague in his response on that.
“Well, we’ve got to see what happens. Maybe there are ways to try to be helpful,” Trump told his wealthy friends.
Trump’s friends say that a proposal in House and Senate tax bills limiting the tax breaks people can claim would drive up taxes on people in New York and are worried about new limitations on their ability to deduct state and local taxes. Trump has not asked Congress to make changes to the bill, but has signaled that he would make adjustments.
“There are very, very few people that aren’t benefiting by [the tax package], but there’s that tiny little sliver, and we’re going to try to take care of even that very small group of people that just through circumstances maybe don’t get the full benefit of what we’re doing,” Trump said Wednesday without specifying who those people were.
LeFrak is not the only one who wants changes. Kathy Wylde, president of the business advocacy group Partnership for New York City, has also called momentum for changes to be built.
“They’re killing the goose that lays the golden egg,” Wylde said.
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