The Daily 202: Biden infrastructure push could face SALT-y Democratic challenge

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) on Thursday threw in with lawmakers who want the package to repeal a limit on how much state and local taxes taxpayers can deduct to lower their yearly obligations to Uncle Sam.

Her comments came after Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Josh Gottheimer, Bill Pascrell, and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey said they wouldn’t back Biden’s infrastructure proposal unless it ended the SALT restrictions.

Prior to President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul, individuals could deduct an unlimited amount of state and local taxes against their federal taxable income. Trump’s law capped the amount at $10,000. The result hurt wealthy Americans in high-tax states like California, New York, New Jersey and Maryland.

“I’m sympathetic to their position,” said Pelosi, who can only afford to lose three of her 219 Democrats if Republicans stay united.

“I would withhold any comment about whether you’re going to vote for a bill or not until you see what the bill is,” she said. “But again, I share their exuberance about the subject of the SALT tax.”

The looming fight over SALT is just the latest battle illustrating Biden’s narrow room to maneuver as he attempts to drive an ambitious and unexpectedly progressive agenda through a tightly divided Congress. Much of the early attention has focused on the newfound clout of centrist Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). 

But the infrastructure push could test the cohesion of Biden’s Democratic allies in the House — and only the Democrats. No Republican voted for the president’s $1.9 trillion rescue package. And while infrastructure notionally has bipartisan appeal, the GOP is unlikely to swallow a roll-back of its 2017 tax law.

Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has led the charge in the upper chamber to repeal the SALT cap. He calls the provision, which Trump used to punish blue states, a “dagger” aimed at the heart of New York.

The politics of lifting the SALT cap are complex: The White House doesn’t relish prospects of a tax cut for rich Americans while it’s looking to help the unemployed and raise the money for the infrastructure plan from the wealthy and corporations. But it is pushing to hike the corporate tax rate to pay for its infrastructure plans.

And agreeing to lift the cap could make trouble for the White House with progressive Democrats. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y), who has said the infrastructure bill is too small, voted against ending the cap in 2019.

“Eliminating SALT obviously is a not a revenue raiser,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday. “If Democrats want to propose a way to eliminate SALT …  and they want to propose a way to pay for it, and they want to put that forward, we’re happy to hear their ideas.”

“Our focus right now is on ensuring that we are getting relief to the broad swath of the American people who are most impacted by the downturn: the 10 million Americans out of work, people who are looking to be a part of growing industries of the future,” she said. “But we understand that many Democrats — or some Democrats, I should say — are focused on that [SALT] and interested in discussing it. We’re happy to discuss it with them.”

The right-leaning Tax Foundation says repealing the cap “would reduce federal revenue by more than $600 billion over the next 10 years” while “almost exclusively” helping the top 20 percent of income earners.

Moreover “[o]n net, these taxpayers tended to have a lower liability under current law, even with the capped SALT deduction,” the think tank estimated.

But “proposing” isn’t Biden’s problem right now. It’s what to do if his congressional allies include it in the infrastructure bill, and even more so if they decline to offset the resulting revenue loss.

Fully vaccinated people may travel, the CDC said. “For domestic travel, people who are two weeks past their final shot do not need to get a coronavirus test before or after trips and do not need to self-quarantine after travel,” Lena Sun and Lori Aratani report. “For international travel, fully vaccinated people do not need to be tested before their trips unless it is required by the destination, the guidance says. For their return to the United States, fully vaccinated people should get tested and have a negative result before they board an international flight back to the United States.” 

The economy added 916,000 jobs in March, the highest level in months. “The unemployment rate edged down to 6 percent from 6.2 percent in February,” Eli Rosenberg reports. “The labor market recovered about 12 million of the 22 million jobs lost in the first two months of the pandemic by October, but until Friday’s report, the pace of the recovery had slowed greatly, as the virus surged through the holidays and into the New Year.”

• “The strange journey of ‘cancel,’ from a Black-culture punchline to a White-grievance watchword,” by Clyde McGrady: “‘Cancel’ and ‘woke’ are the latest terms to originate in Black culture only to be appropriated into the White mainstream and subsequently thrashed to death. Young Black people have used these words for years as sincere calls to consciousness and action, and sometimes as a way to get some jokes off. That White people would lift those terms for their own purposes was predictable, if not inevitable.” 
• “The reason many Guatemalans are coming to the border? A profound hunger crisis,” by Kevin Sieff: “Guatemala now has the sixth-highest rate of chronic malnutrition in the world. … The crisis was caused in part by failed harvests linked to climate change, a string of natural disasters and a nearly nonexistent official response. … In interviews with migrants preparing to leave Guatemala and others who have recently arrived in the United States, the majority mentioned food insecurity as a significant factor in their decisions to leave.”

• “My kids’ school closed again. So I started calling experts,” by ProPublia’s Eric Umansky: “So, what do scientists think of the two-case rule? ‘Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Wow. New York City schools are making a mistake,’ said Dr. Elissa Schechter-Perkins, an epidemiologist and infectious diseases doctor.”
• “These text messages pointed the feds to Matt Gaetz,” by the Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery: “That tip to the feds came in a text message conversation that Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg had with an employee explaining why they were both in the office one weekend two years earlier. … When Greenberg later came under investigation by the Secret Service for identity theft and stalking, agents approached former employees at the tax office to obtain proof of the public official’s activities. That’s when they were suddenly directed to Gaetz.” 

• “Representatives of Iran, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and China will convene in Vienna ‘to clearly identify sanctions lifting and nuclear implementation measures,’ the European Union said in a statement. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said there would be no direct meeting between Iran and the United States as signatories gather Tuesday. ‘Unnecessary,’ he tweeted,” Loveday Morris and Kareem Fahim report. 
• The announcement followed a virtual meeting of Iran and signatories other than the United States today. “Iranian news agencies quoted Abbas Aragchi, the country’s deputy foreign minister, who attended the online meeting, as reiterating his government’s insistence that ‘termination’ of U.S. sanctions [imposed in 2018] was the first step in reviving the nuclear agreement and getting Tehran to end its ‘retaliatory’ measures, including increasing the quantity and quality of its enriched uranium.”

• The sum would be spent over eight years on “home- or community-based care” for the elderly and people with disabilities, Jeff Stein reports. That amounts to roughly a fifth of the plan’s overall price tag.
• “The inclusion of home care represents a significant commitment from the White House, which faced a large — and, at times, competing — set of policy demands from unions, advocates and congressional Democrats, among other allies. Biden postponed many other key components of his economic agenda, such as child care and family medical leave, to a second package set to be unveiled in coming weeks,” Stein writes. “Still, the existing cost of the broader $2 trillion package could limit how much congressional Democrats can spend. Biden has faced heavy criticism from Republicans over the price tag of his proposal and the proposed tax increases on businesses he wants to include to offset the new spending.”
• The proposed home-care expansion shows how the issue has attracted the attention of Democrats and influential groups, but it also reflects the growing alarm by some experts about the nation’s inability to absorb the enormous growth in its elderly population, Stein notes.

• The money “could be crucial in taking passenger service to cities such as Las Vegas and Nashville, and expand operations across large metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Houston,” Luz Lazo reports. “Intercity rail would receive up to a 400 percent boost in funding, according to some estimates, a transformational investment that could bring major rail expansions and millions more riders.”
• “Amtrak on Wednesday unveiled a plan to provide new intercity rail service to 160 communities and expand service in corridors with heightened demand for rail transportation. The passenger railroad also unveiled a map that highlights 30 possible new routes,” Lazo writes. “The federal funding would help Amtrak accomplish long-needed upgrades to tracks, tunnels and bridges in the Northeast, the nation’s busiest rail corridor.”

• “Just as the Biden administration is pushing to raise taxes on corporations, a new study finds that at least 55 of America’s largest paid no taxes last year on billions of dollars in profits,” the Times’s Patricia Cohen reports, thanks to “a range of legal deductions and exemptions that have become staples of the tax code, according to the analysis.”
• A report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that companies like Salesforce, Consolidated Edison, FedEx and Nike “were able to avoid paying any federal income tax for the last three years even though they reported a combined income of $77 billion. Many also received millions of dollars in tax rebates.”

“We have a long way to go in terms of respecting Black people, Black bodies, Black lives in this country,” Bernice King, the daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., told CNN when asked what Derek Chauvin’s trial has meant to her this week. 

• That’s according to an observation by our colleague Dan Diamond. Per The Post’s tracker, at least 99.6 million Americans have received at least one dose of the vaccine. About 52.7 million Americans have received both shots.

• “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday walked back controversial comments made by its director, Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, suggesting that people who are vaccinated against the coronavirus never become infected or transmit the virus to others,” the Times reports.
• “Dr. Walensky spoke broadly during this interview,” an agency spokesman told The Times. “It’s possible that some people who are fully vaccinated could get Covid-19. The evidence isn’t clear whether they can spread the virus to others. We are continuing to evaluate the evidence.”

• “Vaccine passports are new apps that will carry pieces of your health information — most critically your coronavirus vaccination status. They may soon be required to travel internationally or even to enter some buildings. But a growing list of tech companies, governments and open-source software groups are all attempting to tackle the problem, prompting some concerns about a lack of a standard approach that would make it possible to carry around just one pass,” Rachel Lerman reports in a handy FAQ about these “passports.”
• How widespread will these apps be? “It’s unclear how prevalent it will be to require a vaccine passport for entry, or how long-lasting the trend will become. But the initial interest from governments, airlines and even some private venues shows no sign of abating. Travelers to some countries are already using vaccine passports, and Madison Square Garden said it will try out New York’s app. Still, there was a lot of initial interest for tech to get involved in contact tracing at the beginning of the pandemic. Apple and Google created protocols for the practice, but it was only used in a patchwork manner in a few states.”

• The Ever Given is free, but litigation could prevent it from leaving the Suez Canal. “Maritime lawyers are prepared to go to battle over who should be held liable for the grounding of the mammoth container ship,” Antonia Noori Farzan reports. “Billions of dollars of trade was held up each day that the canal was blocked, and the ripple effects across the industry could be felt for months.”
• Taiwan’s worst train crash in decades leaves 51 dead and dozens injured. A construction truck that was improperly parked collided with a passenger train this morning, Eva Dou, Alicia Chen and Pei Lin Wu report.
• Honduras hired an elite D.C. law firm in a failed lobbying effort to derail a “state-sponsored drug trafficking probe” of the president’s brother, Spencer H. Hsu reports. “Prosecutors cited the failed September 2019 influence campaign by Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP — along with the murder of four people linked to the investigation and the defendant’s own alleged repeated lies and obstruction — in urging stiff punishment for Juan Antonio ‘Tony’ Hernández, 42.” A U.S. judge sentenced Hernández to life in prison plus 30 years and a $158 million fine this week.
• Maria Butina, the Russian who conspired to infiltrate U.S. groups, visited opposition leader Alexei Navalny in jail, with video cameras in tow, Robyn Dixon reports. Butina, according to Navalny’s team, was reporting for the Kremlin-funded RT television network, formerly Russia Today. Navalny’s team said he lectured her for 15 minutes in front of the other prisoners, calling her “a parasite and a servant of thieves.”

What does Georgia’s voting law really do? The Times annotated the state’s new 98-page law, identifying 16 key provisions “that will limit ballot access, potentially confuse voters and give more power to Republican lawmakers.” Among the most significant changes to voting in the state, per Nick Corasaniti and Reid Epstein: 

• Voters will now have less time to request absentee ballots.
• It’s now illegal for election officials to mail out absentee ballot applications to all voters.
• If election problems arise, a common occurrence, it is now more difficult to extend voting hours.
• High-turnout elections will probably mean a long wait for results.
• The G.O.P.-led legislature is empowered to suspend county election officials.

Unlike others, Virginia has become a voting rights bastion. “Florida and Texas are poised to advance similar legislation [as Georgia]. Alabama’s strict voter identification law is being used as a template elsewhere,” Epstein and Corasaniti report. “[But] Virginia is bolting in the opposite direction. The Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, this week capped a multiyear liberal movement for greater ballot access by signing off on sweeping legislation to recreate pivotal elements of the federal Voting Rights Act that were struck down by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2013. Alone among the states of the former Confederacy, Virginia has become a voting rights bastion, increasingly encouraging its citizens — especially people of color — to exercise their democratic rights.” 

In Texas, corporate giants are coming out against Republicans’ efforts to restrict voting. “American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, and Dell Technologies, headquartered in Round Rock, were among the first to take a position. American Airlines took specific aim at Senate Bill 7, which would impose sweeping restrictions that take particular aim at local efforts meant to make it easier to vote — like extended early voting hours,” the Texas Tribune reports. 

“Woke and weak CEOS” are “denouncing Georgia’s election law. But have they read it?” asks the WSJ’s Editorial Board. “So much of this CEO posturing cites no facts — or even fails to mention the word ‘Georgia.’ American Express stands ‘against any efforts to suppress voting,’ said CEO Steve Squeri. ‘BlackRock is concerned about efforts that could limit access to the ballot,’ said CEO Larry Fink. … CEOs may think there’s no downside to hopping on a bandwagon that insinuates that Georgia’s GOP leaders are inveterate racists. But far from dodging our partisan political warfare, they’re taking a side and promoting more division.” 

This year’s brood of cicadas has been quietly rummaging around underground for the past 17 years and will not emerge until the soil temperature about a foot below ground reaches 64 degrees. Want to know more about cicadas? Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha answer all your buggiest questions.

Biden will head to Camp David today at noon, where he will spend the weekend. 

Vice President Harris will spend the weekend in Los Angeles. Next week, Harris will finally make the move into the official vice president’s residence at Number One Observatory Circle.

Politico Magazine published an excerpt from former House speaker John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) new book. The writing is punchy, to say the least:

The first lady pranked everyone on her flight home yesterday: 

And our TikTok guy explains Biden’s jobs and infrastructure plan: