The fine print in a 5,593-page spending bill: tax breaks and horse racing
By Luke Broadwater, Jesse Drucker and Rebecca R. Ruiz New York Times,Updated December 23, 2020, 6:43 a.m.
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi walked to her office at the Capitol in Washington, on Monday.STEFANI REYNOLDS/NYT
WASHINGTON â Tucked away in the 5,593-page spending bill that Congress rushed through 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.
Decoding the fine print in a 5,593-page spending bill: Tax breaks and horse racing indiatimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from indiatimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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Both parties spent years decrying congressional earmarks and pork-barrel spending as organized bribery. But a growing number of lawmakers think that bringing back these controversial legislative tactics could be an answer to Washington s hyper-partisan gridlock.
Earmarks are approximately the least sexy aspect of Washington dealmaking, but it s important to grasp their significance. The term means provisions added to spending bills that typically direct funding to lawmakers pet projects to gain their support. They were widely criticized during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies as wasteful, sometimes illegal and frequently corrupt. The infamous Alaska bridge to nowhere, a $223 million project to connect a remote town of 8,000 people to an air