Missing in the debate over the elimination of state and local taxes in the Senate tax bill is whether it's constitutional.

It might not be.

There's something it would be, however: a violation of the states' rights the Republicans say they alone represent.

For one thing, the bill "federalizes" revenue that would have remained in states under the current system. If the SALT provision survives reconciliation between House and Senate versions, it would extract wealth from the 43 states that levy income taxes to fund tax cuts for corporations and the rich.

These states are populated by Republicans and Democrats, obviously. Apologists are spinning the Senate bill that passed last week so it appears to affect Democrats, not Republicans. John Feehery told Bloomberg: "The people who are going get the most whacked by this are wealthy and upper-middle class people who live in big cities. In other words, Democrats."

It's true blue states will be impacted the most, but it's false to suggest only Democrats will feel pain. Just ask the nearly dozen House Republicans from wealthy suburban districts who voted against eliminating SALT deductions in the House version. They know eliminating them will alienate well-heeled supporters who itemize their deductions (they don't take the standard deduction or are not subject to the alternative minimum tax). The Republican plan jeopardizes their chances of re-election in 2018.

The politics of the plan are bewildering. Aside from Texas, blue states are the most populous. In putting its members between a rock and a hard place, the GOP risks losing the House for years. California Gov. Jerry Brown told reporters Monday that the GOP bill "will divide the blue states from the red, the Democrats from the Republicans. It is evil in the extreme."

For another, extracting wealth from mostly blue states might be coercive enough to violate their sovereignty. This hunch is not far-fetched. The Supreme Court ruled in 2012 the government cannot withhold funding on condition that states expand Medicaid programs. Threatening states financially amounted to "undue coercion," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. "The financial 'inducement' Congress has chosen is much more than 'relatively mild encouragement' – it is a gun to the head."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said eliminating SALT deductions would cost more than $17 billion a year. That's not as much as the $52 billion in federal Medicaid funding expected for 2018, but nearly double the amount the state kicks in.

Speaking of double, there is the question of double taxation – taxing the same revenue twice. It has usually been a Republican complaint. They argued for years that taxing corporate profits as well as dividends (profits) is double taxation, which is unfair and unconstitutional. But the same Republican argument can be used against the Republican plan to eliminate SALT deductions.

The Supreme Court already weighed in on double taxation. It ruled in 2015 that a provision in Maryland's tax code that eliminated deductions on income earned and taxed in other states was unconstitutional. According to Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the majority opinion, Maryland's law also interfered with interstate commence. It "creates an incentive" to privilege in-state economic activity over that which crosses state lines.

Given that some states do tax income and some states don't, it stands to reason that attorneys general from states most impacted by the elimination of SALT deductions will appeal the high court's conclusions in opposing the Republican tax law.

Moreover, the provision may trigger complaints of unequal treatment. As long as tax filers in the 43 states that tax income are allowed to deduct from their federal income tax, they have parity with tax filers in the seven states that do not. But by eliminating SALT deductions, Republicans will have created conditions in which tax filers are not treated equally.

Finally, eliminating SALT deductions may weaken federalism. U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a conservative Democrat and an adviser to President Nixon, argued this the last time Congress tried eliminating SALT deductions. The summer 1986 issue of "Publius: The Journal of Federalism" reprinted a speech in which he said "the essence of the federal idea is that there are arenas of government that must not be invaded by other governments."

"Yet the Treasury Department would have us believe that the most fundamental activities of state and local governments are in some significant sense paid for by the federal government through 'subsidies' provided by the federal tax code," he said.

Just as red states sued to stop Obamacare from reorganizing their social orders, blue states are likely to follow suit. Red states claimed the government could not unduly coerce them.