WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans just voted in favor of killing your property tax deduction, New Jersey.

The GOP senators, whose states received $223 billion more from the federal government than their residents send to Washington, voted Thursday in favor of eliminating the state and local tax deduction.

The deduction helps mostly helps residents in states like New Jersey that pay more in federal taxes than they get back from D.C.

"It's outrageous and patently unfair." U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said in an interview after the vote. "There has to be a fundamental principle of tax fairness, not just between low-income wage earners and high-income wage earners, but the tax fairness really has to be between the states as well."

The amendment was approved primarily along party lines, 52-47, with U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., absent because of his ongoing trial on federal corruption charges.

It was added to the Senate budget resolution, designed to trigger a parliamentary maneuver to block a filibuster and allow Republicans to exclude Democrats from negotiations on a tax bill.

The effort to end the deduction was led by U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-West Virginia, whose state in 2015 received $2.07 from Washington for every $1 in federal taxes paid, more than 47 other states, according to the Rockefeller Institute.

New Jersey, on the other hand, got just 74 cents back for each $1, lowest among the 50 states.

Capito has supported eliminating the estate tax, which falls only on multimillionaires with at least $11 million in assets for married couples, even as she decried the the state and local tax deduction as a break that "disproportionately benefits wealthy and high earners."

In reality, a majority of the tax break -- $51.30 of every $100 in state and local taxes deducted -- went to households making $200,000 or less, according to Internal Revenue Service statistics for tax year 2015 assembled by the Tax Foundation, a Washington research group.

And 38 million of the 44.3 million taxpayers who took the state and local tax deduction in 2015, or 86 percent, reported income of $200,000 or less, according to the Government Finance Officers Association.

The Senate action was not a surprise as only one of the 10 states where residents most use the deduction has any Republican senators. One of those Republicans, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, has said he would like to keep the deduction.

"We always knew the Senate would do this," said John Byers, a spokesman for Rep. Leonard Lance, R-7th Dist., who is helping to lead the effort to save the deduction.

"This fight was always going to play out in the House and we're seeing early signs of give. Our arguments are resonating and our numbers are growing in the GOP conference. We're not going to let up."

Lance, along with Reps. Frank LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., and Chris Smith, R-4th Dist., broke with their party and voted against the House budget resolution. Only two New Jersey Republicans, Reps. Tom MacArthur, R-3rd Dist., and Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-11th Dist., supported it.

Eliminating the state and local tax deduction would free up around $1.3 billion earmarked for lowering rates and passing other breaks that primarily would benefit high earners.

The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, said the plan proposed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republican leaders would give 80 percent of its benefits to the richest 1 percent.

"We're not going to bear the burden of paying for Donald Trump's tax cuts he wants to give to the wealthiest in the United States," Booker said. "Right now, he is tax reform package is really just a tax break for the highest earners."

Economist Kevin Hassett, chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, said the middle class, not the wealthy, will be the biggest benefiaries when the tax package is finished.

"That's what everyone should expect from this," Hassett told a group of Washington-based reporters from NJ Advance Media and other local news outlets.

Still, a CNN poll released Wednesday said 52 percent disapproved of Trump's tax proposals, with 34 percent supporting it. Half of respondents disapproved of the way he was handling the tax issue, wiht just 36 percent in support.

The poll of 1,010 U.S. adults was conducted Oct. 12-15 and had a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.