Someone ought to tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the coronavirus outbreak, because her laser focus on pushing her political agenda suggests she’s unaware of it.
The latest evidence: She wants to “retroactively” roll back Congress’ 2017 cap on tax deductions for state and local taxes (SALT), the New York Times reports.
She claims lifting the cap would address the economic fallout of COVID-19. She wants her “fix” to be part of Congress’ next rescue plan.
But her idea has nothing to do with boosting the economy and everything to do with helping Dems in blue states, like California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. More than half the benefits of a repeal would go to folks making more than $1 million. Don’t Dems oppose tax breaks for the rich?
No, here’s Pelosi’s real problem: Heavily liberal states, with Democratic leaders, generally impose the highest local levies. The SALT deduction let high-income taxpayers recoup part of those high costs by paying less federal tax.
With the cap, though, these taxpayers can’t recover as much, so the local tax bite hits harder. That has these states’ leaders (understandably) fearing wealthy residents will flee, taking all their tax revenues with them. And rather than lower their taxes to prevent that, they want the cap lifted.
It’s another attempt, in other words, by Pelosi to use the pandemic to ram through the Dems’ wish list. Last week, she actually held up Congress’ $2.2 trillion rescue plan to push a host of asks — related to climate change, voting rights, diversity, etc.
These various moves show that Pelosi isn’t really taking the crisis seriously — she’s just looking for an excuse to get her partisan priorities passed.