Here's something interesting.
Last week I told you about Republican governor from Ohio, Mike DeWine, who essentially abandoned
Donald Trump when it comes to dealing with Corona virus.
Mike DeWine took her own virus seriously from quite early on.
One of one of the earlier governors to really take action.
And he has seen his approval skyrocket thanks to not following the Trump doctrine and following
these sort of sensible governor doctrine on coronavirus.
We've now learned that Republican Congressman Peter King from New York, who I am no big
fan of, is going to be ignoring the Republican Party and voting for a Democratic coronavirus
relief package that's expected to be voted on later today.
If it may already have been voted on by the time you listened to today's show.
Now, I have mixed feelings about this in the sense that it is once again, it's a Republican
who's personally affected by something and now is behaving rationally and doing the right
empathetic thing.
I wish it didn't take that to get them to behave appropriately.
And what I mean by that is Peter King is a New York congressman.
He represents one of the hardest hit areas by the virus.
It's New York's second congressional district.
This is the south shore of Long Island.
So it's not the absolute epicenter of New York City's five boroughs, but it's as close
as you can be.
It's it's just, you know, the New York City metro area without actually being there.
And that's why he's going to vote in favor of this package.
Republicans have been talking more and more about what if we maybe limit relief to blue
states.
They've been hesitant to do more relief and a second stimulus.
But Peter King can't get away with that.
His district has been absolutely crushed.
So there are some who are framing this as hero.
Peter King abandons his party and does the right thing.
Well, it's more like Peter King abandons his party on this one, bill, because it would
be political suicide for him personally not to, since he represents one of the hardest
hit congressional districts in the country.
If it were the Boston area or Seattle that needed this particular type of bill and not
his district, my guess is he would not be voting for it.
He would simply stick it out with Republicans.
Peter King is normally no friend of the left or of the Democratic Party.
And this is one.
It's a horrible realization that we have to have what it takes for some of these people
to do something, to do the right thing is to be personally affected.
He needs to be reelected in November.
So that's why he has to do this.
Now, as far as the bill goes, there are actually some really interesting things in it.
This is called the Heroes Act, 3 trillion in total.
It stands for the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act Heroes Act.
It would pay a company's payroll costs up to one hundred thousand dollars per employee
who has been laid off or furloughed.
If the business can demonstrate that their revenue has dropped at least 20 percent, it
would add eight hundred and fifty billion in assistance to state and local governments.
Two hundred billion in hazard pay for frontline health care workers and other non-essential
workers.
It would do another round of twelve hundred dollar checks to most Americans.
It would raise the payment per child from five hundred dollars also to twelve hundred
dollars, but it would be capped total at six thousand dollars per family.
It would extend the supplemental, or I guess they're calling it enhanced unemployment from
the federal government through January 30, first of next year.
And one of the most interesting components that's buried in there, which I don't actually
think will pass if the bill does pass, is that it will eliminate the ten thousand dollar
cap on what's called salt state and local taxes for 2020 and 2021.
This is super interesting because one of the ways that the Trump Republican tax reform
of 2017 hurt those in states like mostly blue blue states with higher state income taxes
is they limited the state and local tax deduction to $10000.
So if you live in a very high tax state or just a blue state with a reasonable amount
of tax, you are limited in what amount of tax you can write off on your federal return
to $10000 total.
This goes directly at blue states and it tends to have no effect in some of these red states
that have no state income tax.
So it would repeal that for 2020 and 2021, which is very, very interesting.
Although analysts agree it is very unlikely that that suspension of the $10000 salt cap
would actually make it into a final bill that passes Senate and House conference.
But in the meantime, we will see how the House votes.
Peter King apparently will be voting with Democrats.
And we will follow it.