Action Wednesday by the New York State legislature could mean Congress — and perhaps the American public — will finally get a notion of what’s in Donald Trump’s tax returns.
The Democratic-led legislature voted 84-53 for a bill to let New York tax officials turn over Trump’s state returns to any one of three congressional committees.
“Such returns,” reports the New York Times, “filed in New York, the president’s home state and business headquarters — would likely contain much of the same information as the contested federal returns.”
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill.
The state tax returns would have to be requested by the leaders of tax-writing committees in Congress, something that cannot happen right away.
“Existing laws generally prohibit such a release, and those congressional panels — the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee and the Joint Committee on Taxation — could file a request with the state only after efforts to gain access to federal tax filings through the Treasury Department failed,” says NBC News.
The Treasury Department has rejected the House Ways and Means Committee’s subpoenas for six years of Trump’s federal returns. Democrats will probably take the dispute to court.
Republicans opposing the legislation called it “political.” One assemblyman said the Democrats were “using this body as a weapon” against Trump.
But during debate on the bill, one Democratic assemblyman warned against secrecy in government, which he said “breeds corruption.”
He said Trump has “intentionally and publicly thwarted the legitimate and necessary oversight of Congress,” which has the responsibility to “guarantee that no government official is selling government policy for personal gain,” says NBC.