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Catherine Rampell: The GOP tax law doesn't just hurt blue states. It hurts everyone.

It creates huge political problems for almost every state. With relatively little fanfare, Congress effectively sent ticking time bombs to statehouses across the country, which are scrambling to assess and contain the damage.

Yes, it’s true that the federal law’s new limits on state and local tax deductions disproportionately hurt high-tax, mostly Democratic states.

New York, New Jersey and California are all now exploring workarounds, such as essentially reclassifying state taxes as charitable contributions. (It’s not clear yet that the IRS will buy this scheme.)

There are, however, lots of other ways the federal law will scramble blue- and red-state budgets and plunge some of them deeper into fiscal and political crisis.