{"id":15649,"date":"2025-11-14T11:01:53","date_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:01:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/nevada-dems-gop-battle-over-no-tax-on-tips\/"},"modified":"2025-11-14T11:01:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-14T11:01:53","slug":"nevada-dems-gop-battle-over-no-tax-on-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/nevada-dems-gop-battle-over-no-tax-on-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Nevada Dems, GOP battle over \u2018no-tax-on-tips\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Democrats are trying to blunt the Republican advantage on the widely popular no-tax-on-tips policy as both parties look to strengthen their appeal to the working class ahead of the midterms.<\/p>\n

The most intense of these battles is unfolding in Nevada, where five percent of workers earn tips, about double the national rate. Republicans are looking to flip three of the state\u2019s four congressional districts \u2014 which include some regions where the tourism and gambling economy dominates. They have already spent millions on ads targeting Nevada Democrats for voting against the GOP megabill<\/a> that included the tax deduction for tipped workers, which was pushed by President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

“Everyone knows that that was a massively influential message by the president,” said Robert Uithoven, a GOP strategist who is running the campaign of Lydia Dominguez, one of the Republicans vying for the party’s nomination to take on Rep. Susie Lee<\/a> (D-Nev.). Uithoven noted that Trump won Lee’s district \u2014 which he said includes a large number of workers employed on the Vegas Strip \u2014 and carried the state.<\/p>\n

Democrats, meanwhile, have blitzed through Las Vegas, Reno and the state\u2019s other tourist hotspots, proclaiming that Republicans generated no such boon for tipped workers there. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re going to see it, they\u2019re going to feel it. They\u2019re already feeling it,\u201d Lee said in an interview with Blue Light News. \u201cIt’s a raw deal for tipped earners, because it’s not permanent, and it’s so much smaller than what the wealthiest Americans got out of that bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

The skirmishing comes as both parties look to control the narrative on the affordability of groceries, housing and other staples, along with the state of household incomes \u2014 issues expected to have outsized influence on next year\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n

Moreover, Republicans are trying to better market the omnibus legislation they passed this summer, which hasn\u2019t proven as popular as they hoped<\/u><\/a>. They are zeroing in on individual portions of the megabill that are broadly appealing to working-class voters, and deductions for tipped workers could score the party much-needed political gains after a crushing off-year election defeat last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cNevadans know who put more money back in their pockets, and it wasn\u2019t the Democrat frauds who are trying to claim credit,\u201d said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP\u2019s campaign arm. \u201cOut of touch Democrats Steven Horsford<\/a>, Dina Titus<\/a> and Susie Lee can\u2019t lie their way out of this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevada Democrats bristle at Republicans\u2019 characterization of them as followers \u2014 not leaders \u2014 on tax breaks for tipped workers. They note that the idea was a seminal part of their 2024 campaigns, and chastised their opponents for failing to back an alternative measure, which they said would have offered tipped workers more meaningful breaks, and the elimination of subminimum wages. <\/p>\n

The bill fizzled out in Congress, which \u2014 according to Horsford, who drew up the measure \u2014 indicates the GOP\u2019s efforts are disingenuous.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy bill, the TIPS Act<\/a>, does all the things that the tipped workers asked for because I asked them what they wanted included in the bill as I worked on it. That\u2019s where the Republicans got their bill wrong from the beginning. They listened to one person, Donald Trump, and not the workers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Titus, who has introduced legislation on the issue<\/a> that would also raise the regular minimum wage, said: \u201cExempting tips from income taxes is only part of the solution to increasing the wages of tipped workers.” <\/p>\n

The Democrats’ counteroffensive is part of a larger portrait Democrats have spent months drawing up in hopes of demonstrating that the GOP\u2019s promise of beefier refund checks next filing season will be moot for the working class. They\u2019ve pointed to several statistics: Over a third of tipped workersdo not make enough money to pay federal income taxes<\/u><\/a>. Two in five tipped workersrely on Medicaid and other public assistance<\/u><\/a> that the GOP has slashed or could let expire. <\/p>\n

And they note that the tax break will lapse in three years unless Congress extends it, while the cuts to public benefits would be permanent.<\/p>\n

\u201cD.C. Republicans are giving temporary crumbs to working families,\u201d said Lindsay Reilly, a spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the party\u2019s House campaign arm. \u201cMeanwhile, millions of families are at risk of losing their health care, hundreds of hospitals could close, and countless Americans could lose their jobs \u2014 all to pay for permanent tax cuts for billionaires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevada Democrats also say Trump\u2019s coarse diplomatic relations with Canada have eroded the state\u2019s tourism economy, which is heavily dependent on Canadian visitation, and squandered any windfalls the GOP tax deduction on tips could generate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have less tourism there, there\u2019s less cars to park, there\u2019s less rooms to clean, there\u2019s less tables to serve,\u201d said Lee, who represents Nevada\u2019s third district, which includes southern Las Vegas. \u201cThat\u2019s less tipped income.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s perhaps no group more important for the parties to win over on the issue in Nevada than Culinary Workers Union Local 226, which represents the state\u2019s hospitality workers. But in the union\u2019s eyes, both sides are flailing.<\/p>\n

In late October, the union sent a letter to Treasury and the IRS rebuking the limitations of the tax cut in the GOP megabill and asking for the same things Democrats have pushed for: a permanent extension of the tip tax deduction that would also cover automatic gratuities and eliminate the subminimum wage. Neither the agencies nor congressional Republicans have indicated they\u2019re willing to offer concessions since then, to the union\u2019s frustration, said Ted Pappageorge, its secretary-treasurer.<\/p>\n

But that shouldn\u2019t serve as a reprieve for House Democrats, even if they earned the union\u2019s endorsement last year, he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be a real fight with the Democratic Party about a message that is very clear that we are going to tackle the cost of living and support working class, kitchen table voters,\u201d Pappageorge said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been very clear, we\u2019re going to talk to Republicans, Democrats and independents, and we\u2019re going to run our own members because we don\u2019t see Democrats focusing on working class issues in a way that is going to win in the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel Benson contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Democrats are trying to blunt the Republican advantage on the widely popular no-tax-on-tips policy as both parties look to strengthen their appeal to the working class ahead of the midterms. The most intense of these battles is unfolding in Nevada, where five percent of workers earn tips, about double the national rate. Republicans are looking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15649\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}