Becchi worked as a corporate lobbyist to promote the tax bill that capped the SALT deduction and hurt New Jersey Families.
When pressed about her support of the 2017 tax bill that capped state and local tax deductions raising taxes on New Jersey families, corporate lobbyist Rosemary Becchi tied herself in knots misrepresenting the work she actually did to push the bill through Congress.
What she left out is that official records show that before its passage in late 2017, Becchi lobbied for the bill on behalf of special interests who stood to benefit at the expense of New Jersey taxpayers. That means she was aware that capping SALT deductions was part of the very legislation she was promoting. Becchi lobbied on the tax bill on behalf of a variety of special interest clients and corporations. The bill disproportionately hurt New Jersey especially in NJ-11 where more than 50 percent of taxpayers took a SALT deduction the year prior, the second highest percentage for a congressional district across the country.
What’s worse: in an op-ed she authored in 2017, Becchi lamented that Republicans were spending too much time “bickering over which deductions, exemptions, and credits are worth preserving” while writing the tax bill. It’s clear Becchi was not fighting against the cap, as she may now try to claim; she was complaining that the serious discussions around important deductions—including the SALT deduction—were “threatening to upend the party’s ambitious efforts” to get the bill passed and thus, threatening her clients’ interests.
Becchi now says she “did not specifically work on particular provisions of the bill,” and in the very next sentence says she “was working on some” provisions.
Well, which is it…
Despite what she says now, quickly delivering tax cuts for Becchi’s special interest clients far out-weighed the need to preserve SALT for families across New Jersey.
“She can try to clean it up, but Rosemary Becchi’s record as a corporate lobbyist and Washington insider lobbying on behalf of special interest groups to hurt New Jersey families will follow her wherever she goes,” said DCCC Spokesperson Christine Bennett. “Becchi needs to fully answer for her lobbyist work on the bill that raised taxes on middle-class families across New Jersey.”
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