WASHINGTON — A tentative proposal negotiated between blue-state Republicans, the White House, and Senate leaders over the past week would preserve the $40,000 cap on state and local tax deductions passed by GOP-controlled House last month, but phase-out the increased cap after five years.

As the U.S. Senate gears up for an upcoming vote on the massive tax-and-spend bill backed by President Donald Trump, House and Senate negotiators, including Long Island Reps. Andrew Garbarino and Nick LaLota, have been trying to reach a compromise on the SALT cap – a $10,000 cap on state and local tax write-offs that was implemented in 2017 under a Trump-approved tax plan set to expire at the end of the year.

Garbarino (R-Bayport), co-chairman of the House SALT Caucus, told Newsday on Friday that the tentative proposal calls for keeping the $40,000 cap for households earning $500,000 or less that was passed by the House, but placing a five-year limit on the plan. After five years, the cap would return to $10,000.

“It’s much more important that we don’t water down the deduction, that we don’t water down the income limits,” Garbarino said in a phone interview, referring in part to calls from other Senate Republicans to keep the cap at $10,000 or to limit the cap increase to $30,000.

Garbarino and LaLota (R-Amityville) were among the blue-state House Republicans who met this week with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, White House officials and Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), the lead Senate negotiator on SALT, to hash out a compromise deal as Trump presses congressional Republicans to pass a mega bill stacked with his legislative priorities by July 4.

“We’re very, very close,” Bessent told reporters on Capitol Hill Friday afternoon when asked about the negotiations. He declined to offer more details.

The majority of Senate Republicans have opposed increasing the current $10,000 deduction cap, arguing that a larger write-off only benefits Democratic-run states with higher state and local taxes. A proposal floated by the Senate Finance Committee last week called for keeping the cap at $10,000 permanently, but SALT Caucus Republicans immediately vowed to tank any version of the bill that returned back to the House with a figure less than $40,000.

New York lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have long argued that placing a cap essentially amounts to double-taxation on a homeowner’s income, and have insisted blue states subsidize red states by paying more in federal taxes than they receive back in services from the federal government.

LaLota told Newsday he is a “hard no” on any proposal that calls for returning to the $10,000 limit, and said he supports another proposal raised in the negotiation sessions that calls for changing the income thresholds to $225,000 for single filers and $450,000 for joint filers.

“That structure is more interesting to me than what is on the table right now,” LaLota said in a phone interview.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, after leaving a closed-door lunch with Senate Republicans, on Friday told reporters waiting outside that he believed GOP senators would support the tentative proposal that calls for placing a five-year-deadline on the $40,000 cap.

“They’re going to digest the final calculations, but I think we’re very, very close to closing that issue,” Johnson said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) has signaled that a vote on the mega bill could be scheduled as soon as Saturday, but told reporters on Friday that the timeframe was “aspirational” as Senators continue to negotiate various provisions of the bill including changes to Medicaid eligibility requirements.

 Trump has been pushing lawmakers to deliver a final version of the bill to his desk by July 4. At an unrelated news conference at the White House on Friday he appeared to soften his expectation, saying the date was important but “not the end-all.”

Hours later, in a social media post, he told lawmakers the bill “must be ready to send it to my desk before July 4th."