Opinion: Golden State holds breath as Congress debates rules on clean air, EVs, SALT

Downtown Los Angeles on a smoggy day File photo courtesy Los Angeles Urgency Management Department This column was originally published by CalMatters Sign up for their newsletters Four months into Donald Trump s second presidency Republican legislative leaders are attempting to give him various major victories Particular of the the majority contentious issues now awaiting votes would have particularly heavy impacts on California One pending measure would cancel or at least try to cancel California s long-standing waiver of federal clean air rules that allows the state to impose tighter restrictions on emissions More specifically rule that passed the House of Representatives with aid from several dozen Democrats is pending in the Senate and would undermine California s decree that no new gasoline-powered cars could be sold in the state after Another issue is whether a cap on the deductibility of state and local taxes on federal tax returns passed in during Trump s first stint as president will remain in force be repealed or be altered It has the effect of raising federal levies on taxpayers in states with high income tax rates such as California and is seen by leaders of those states as punitive When the cap was enacted California tax government estimated that it would cost Californians another billion a year When the House voted a minimal weeks ago to cancel California s Clean Air Act waiver and those of other states that have followed its lead Gov Gavin Newsom cried foul contending that the action illegally invoked the Congressional Review Act Trump Republicans are hellbent on making California smoggy again Newsom declared in a report Clean air didn t used to be political In fact we can thank Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon for our decades-old authority to clean our air The only thing that s changed is that big polluters and the right-wing propaganda machine have succeeded in buying off the Republican Party and now the House is using a tactic that the Senate s own parliamentarian has reported is lawless During his first presidency Trump tried to cancel California s waiver but failed The nation s automakers although displeased by the decree didn t back Trump s move That was then and this is now Sales of zero emission vehicles which were booming a limited years ago have flattened California had contended that of new bicycle sales in California would be zero emission cars by but purchases seem to be stuck at about Major automakers such as General Motors now contend that the mandate is unrealistic On Tuesday U S Senate Majority Leader John Thune declared that the chamber would soon vote on the waiver indicating that he has the votes and it could garner endorsement from a few Democrats as it did in the House Its passage seemingly would touch off a legal battle The aforementioned deductibility of state and local taxes dubbed SALT by the issue s political warriors is less settled The SALT deduction has become an outsize stumbling block for Republicans trying to pass a trillion tax proposal that would extend President Trump s tax cuts and roll back subsidies for clean vitality among other things the New York Times shared last week A group of Republican House members mostly from New York New Jersey and California have vowed to vote no on the package unless the cap which helped pay for the cuts and expires this year is raised or abolished And even among the holdouts there is dissension something that drew attention during a Republican caucus meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson The issue cuts across party lines pitting legislators from the bulk affected states against mostly red states that are largely unaffected While Trump apparently wants to keep the cap the possibility of raising it perhaps to is kicking around The issue remains deadlocked CalMatters is a masses interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California s state Capitol works and why it matters