For those of us that live in states that do not have state income tax, this "new" deduction is completely worthless. We are already allowed to deduct sales tax from our income. Big ticket items can be deducted separately from the standard sales tax deduction (unless you really want to track every purchase and itemize). This deduction was added a few years ago to compensate those of us that were unable to deduct state income taxes from our federal return.
If they were going to help out, I wish they would have just left the auto loan interest deduction in there instead. That would have been good for about $5-6k on a 72-month loan ($30k@6%) instead of $1700 in sales taxes.