The COVID Relief Bill: Tax Breaks for the Rich, Lack of Concern for Everyone Else

Context

Deriding the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare for All," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed to be Congress' "grim reaper" and thwart all progressive proposals on the Senate floor. "If I'm still the majority leader of the Senate after next year, none of those things are going to pass the Senate," the Kentucky Republican told a small crowd during an event in his home state Monday. "They won't even be voted on. So think of me as the Grim Reaper: the guy who is going to make sure that socialism doesn't land on the president's desk." -- CBS News, April 22, 2019

The New York Times writes:

Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through on Monday night is a provision that some tax experts call a $200 billion giveaway to the rich.

It involves the tens of thousands of businesses that received loans from the federal government this spring with the promise that the loans would be forgiven, tax free, if they agreed to keep employees on the payroll through the coronavirus pandemic.

But for some businesses and their high-paid accountants, that was not enough. They went to Congress with another request: Not only should the forgiven loans not to be taxed as income, but the expenditures used with those loans should be tax deductible.

“High-income business owners have had tax benefits and unprecedented government grants showered down upon then. And the scale is massive,” said 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 percent of Americans. 

The new provision allows for a classic double dip into the Payroll 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 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.

Once again, the radical right GOP makes clear that it serves wealthy people and interests before average and poor people and without one shred of regard to increasing the federal debt. Oddly, the president seems to be miffed about the focus on service to the rich and powerful. One can only wonder what prompted that bizarre, out-of-character outburst.

The other aspect of this complex, massive bill that may jump out is the way it was written and presented to congress.

“Members of Congress have not read this bill. It’s over 5000 pages, arrived at 2pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in 2 hours,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, tweeted on Monday. “This isn’t governance. It’s hostage-taking.”

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of 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 tweeted on Monday.

A personal peeve

In the last few days, the MSM reported on this in ways that are increasingly personally irritating. NPR referred to the process as having taken about seven months to do. That is false and completely misleading. Other sources are making similar gross mistakes in mischaracterizing the situation. In fact, it took the House a short period of time to write and pass the bill. Republican Senator Mitch McConnell did little or nothing after that to work on its passage. McConnell played his usual obstructionist Grim Reaper role and ignored the House bill, which the House passed last May.

What some sources gently suggest, and I believe is true, is that partisan politics, not concern for the American people, prompted McConnell to finally take up the COVID relief and spending bill. The two republicans running for Senate in Georgia appear to be floundering in their campaigns. Passing the bill out of the Senate would give them something to point to as their success on behalf of the American people. McConnell does not care about the welfare of the American people any more than the radical right GOP in congress or the president. What McConnell and the GOP are concerned about is remaining in power. McConnell wants to remain in power as Senate majority leader. That is why this bill was passed and that is why no one in congress had a chance to read it before voting on it.

That is how this disaster would have been reported if accuracy and context were important to the MSM.

When the hell is the MSM going to grow a spine and start reporting accurately? Probably not as long as big corporations own it. The profit motive and advertiser demands are not only incompatible with professional journalism. They are highly destructive and hostile toward it (and democracy and the rule of law).