{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://peteking.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/last-chance-for-li-institutions-on-influencing-tax-overhaul", "Last chance for LI institutions on influencing tax overhaul", "2017-12-05", "2017", "2017-12", "Republican", "House", "NY", "Peter King", "K000210", "peteking.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON \u2014 Long Islanders and other New Yorkers have one more long-shot chance to influence the tax legislation before it becomes enacted into law \u2014 and topping their wish list is restoration of the state and local tax deduction.\nThe list also includes hopes that the writers of the massive overhaul will keep tax-exempt private activity bonds, reject repealing the requirement that people obtain health insurance and preserve student loan interest deductions.\nThat one last opportunity will come next week, when lawmakers begin hammering out differences between the Senate Republicans\u2019 $1.4 trillion bill passed early Saturday and the House Republicans\u2019 $1.5 trillion version passed Nov. 16 to create a final bill.\nIt will take several days just to sift through the nearly 500-page Senate bill to determine exactly what measures are included, said Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), who voted against the House bill.\n\u201cThere could be a hundred other examples in the bill that we don\u2019t know about,\u201d he said. \u201cThese guys are changing the bills with ballpoint pens on the floor of the Senate the other night.\u201d\nStill, saving the state and local tax deduction remains the top priority for Long Island\u2019s delegation to Congress, business groups such as the Long Island Association and the Association for a Better New York, and even hospital and higher education associations.\n\u201cWe\u2019re still going to be fighting and still making noise to bring as much attention as possible,\u201d King said. But he also acknowledged, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be very difficult.\u201d\nKing said that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was the best hope to restore those deductions in the Senate bill, but she accepted the Senate Republican leaders\u2019 decision to add to their bill the House measure to allow homeowners to deduct only up to $10,000 in property taxes.\nRepresentatives of two major economic forces on Long Island \u2014 health care and higher education \u2014 are lobbying to block key changes to the tax code in both bills.\nLocal governments and nonprofits including hospitals and colleges hope that the final legislation omits a measure in the House bill that would end the exemption for tax-exempt bonds, which they use to build facilities.\nKevin Dahill, president of the Suburban Hospital Alliance of New York State, pointed to provisions he hopes are removed from the final version.\nOne is the House bill\u2019s elimination of deductions for medical expenses exceeding 10 percent of income, and the other is the Senate bill\u2019s elimination of Obamacare\u2019s health insurance mandate for individuals, which the Congressional Budget Office said would raise premiums 10 percent a year and result in 13 million more people going without health insurance.\nDahill said the Obamacare insurance exchange has worked well on Long Island, and he would hate to see it get destablized by elimination of the mandate. \u201cIt would be such a setback,\u201d he said.\nMary Beth Labate, president of the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities of New York, urged Republicans to reconsider parts of both the House and Senate bills that seek to end exemptions and add taxes to private nonprofit colleges.\n\u201cPreserving tax deductibility for student loan interest and higher education savings options, and keeping tuition and employer-based tuition benefits tax-free are all in our common interest,\u201d Labate argued earlier this month.\nThe House version ends those benefits, but the Senate retains student loan interest deductions, which were taken by more than 130,000 Long Island taxpayers in 2015, IRS data shows.\nSenate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats argued that both the House and Senate Republican bills should be scrapped and that Republicans should work with Democrats to come up with a bipartisan tax overhaul bill.\nBut that is not going to happen, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said last week.\nInstead, Republicans from the Senate and House will seek to compromise on the differences in the two bills with one overriding consideration: Creating a final bill that will satisfy a majority of their members and pass in both chambers before Christmas.\nSaid Dahill: \u201cWhat we become concerned about is this: In their effort to move this along quickly, will the House just accept the Senate bill?\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://peteking.house.gov/media-center/in-the-news/last-chance-for-li-institutions-on-influencing-tax-overhaul"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7947820015251637, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}