On the recordMay 13, 2020
this week, the Congress continues to work on a bipartisan basis to try to respond to this coronavirus pandemic. We have heard that the House of Representatives, under Democratic majority, has a new proposal. We have ideas on our side. We have already passed four pieces of legislation that deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The total spending is about $2.5 trillion that has already been spent. The Speaker of the House proposed a new piece of legislation this week that I think the House will vote on Friday. That is another $3 trillion. It is actually more than the previous four combined. The legislation that she is proposing has a lot of items that aren't directly related to the COVID-19 crisis. They are, as some have said, a wish list of priorities, and others have said in the media that it is more of a messaging bill. We will see. Among other things, it says, as an example, that they want to change the current law, which says that you are limited in terms of how much of a Federal tax deduction you can take for State and local taxes. That is called the SALT issue. They want to repeal that. That cost, by the way, is about $180 billion--something like that. It would result in about 50 percent of the tax benefit going to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. That doesn't sound like something that is going to be impactful in terms of the coronavirus pandemic we face.…
