For this, local and state governments need money — which they mostly get from their own taxpayers, not from Washington. To assert that the federal government has the primary claim on this tax dollar, as Republicans are doing, is to claim that the federal government bears the primary responsibility for these tasks.

That’s not a conservative argument, but a European one. In France, the national government, not Paris, stands behind a $37 billion “Grand Paris” plan to improve public transportation. In America, by contrast, Washington expects New York and New Jersey to bear half the cost of a new tunnel under the Hudson River, even though Amtrak, the national railroad, depends on this critical piece of infrastructure. Similarly, New York has received only $1.3 billion toward the $4.2 billion cost of the first three stops of the Second Avenue subway. The rest comes from New York taxpayers.

Wealthier taxpayers do disproportionately benefit from these tax deductions, because they pay the most in taxes. In New York City, just 1 percent of tax filers — 37,273 households — pay 49.3 percent of city income taxes. But their ability to deduct these taxes from federal taxable income is an indirect subsidy to New York’s poorer and middle-class residents, who benefit from state and local spending on education, Medicaid, public safety and homeless services.

If Congress were going to diminish America’s local-governance model anyway, now is not the time. Nearly a decade into the economic recovery, state and local governments remain under fiscal stress, particularly when it comes to pension and health care promises to retirees.

Chicago owes $45.2 billion to current and future public-sector pensioners, but had set aside only $9.5 billion as of the city’s latest audited annual report. New Jersey and its local governments owe $122.2 billion, but have set aside just $53.7 billion. Even healthier governments, such as New York State and New York City, owe tens of billions of dollars in future health care payment obligations to retirees.