They are all crooks -- Reps and Dems -- and nothing will change until voters wise up and start voting for third party candidates.
Luke Broadwater, Jesse Drucker and Rebecca R. Ruiz
Wed, December 23, 2020, 1:00 PM GMT
“High-income business owners have had tax benefits and unprecedented government grants showered down upon then. And the scale is massive,” wrote Adam Looney, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former Treasury Department tax official in the Obama administration, who estimated that $120 billion of the $200 billion would flow to the top 1% of Americans.
The new provision allows for a classic double dip into the Paycheck Protection Program, as businesses get free money from the government, then get to deduct that largess from their taxes.
And it is one of hundreds included in a huge spending package and a coronavirus stimulus bill that is supposed to help businesses and families struggling during the pandemic but, critics say, swerved far afield. President Donald Trump on Tuesday night blasted it as a disgrace and demanded revisions.
“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it,” he said in a video posted on Twitter that stopped just short of a veto threat.
The measure includes serious policy changes beyond the much-needed $900 billion in coronavirus relief, such as a simplification of federal financial aid forms, measures to address climate change and a provision to stop “surprise billing” from hospitals when patients unwittingly receive care from physicians out of their insurance networks.
But there is also much grumbling over other provisions that lawmakers had not fully reviewed, and a process that left most of them and the public in the dark until after the bill was passed. The anger was bipartisan.
“Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5,000 pages, arrived at 2 p.m. today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in two hours,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., wrote on Twitter on Monday. “This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.”
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, agreed — the two do not agree on much.
“It’s ABSURD to have a $2.5 trillion spending bill negotiated in secret and then — hours later — demand an up-or-down vote on a bill nobody has had time to read,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The items jammed into the bill are varied and at times bewildering. The bill would make it a felony to offer illegal streaming services. One provision requires the CIA to report back to Congress on the activities of Eastern European oligarchs tied to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The federal government would be required to set up a program aimed at eradicating the murder hornet and to crack down on online sales of e-cigarettes to minors.
It authorizes 93 acres of federal lands to be used for the construction of the Teddy Roosevelt Presidential Library in North Dakota and creates an independent commission to oversee horse racing, a priority of Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the majority leader.
McConnell inserted that item to get around the objections of a Democratic senator, who wanted it amended, but he received agreement from other congressional leaders.
Alexander M. Waldrop, CEO of the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, said Tuesday that McConnell had “said many times he feared for the future of horse racing and the impact on the industry, which of course is critical to Kentucky.”
