Washington accidentally shuts itself down with ban on non-essential businesses

Congress has asked all non-essential businesses to limit their hours or close entirely for an undetermined amount of time.

But this shutdown mistakenly shut down the most non-essential entity of all: the government. For a brief period of time, all government in the United States was illegal, since it is completely non-essential to everything.

"Oops," said Senator Mitch McConnell. "We meant non-essential private businesses. Of course, the government is always essential, even when it's not doing anything or is making things worse."

Senators, congresspeople, and bureaucrats frantically rewrote the ban to include only businesses that actually produced something and not government agencies that just watched other people make stuff. Though they had dragged their feet on passing bills related to relieving the financial distress of the shutdown, they passed this revision in record speed, almost as quickly as they vote for pay raises for themselves.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said she would have caught the mistake but had passed the ban in a hurry, saying, "We had to pass the ban to see what it did."

Pelosi Makes Tax Break For Millionaires A Priority In Fourth Stimulus Package

While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talks endlessly about helping working Americans, she’s quietly making an effort to get millions of dollars for millionaires.

Pelosi is proposing a rollback cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions as part of the next coronavirus stimulus bill.

“A 2019 report from the Joint Committee on Taxation projected that of those who would face lower tax liability from elimination of the cap – which only affects those who itemize tax deductions – 94 percent earn at least $100,000,” Fox News reports. “The government would lose out on $77.4 billion in tax dollars, with more than half of that amount being saved by taxpayers earning $1 million or more.”

The SALT cap, established by President Trump in 2017 as part of his tax reform law, sets the limit for deductions of state and local tax from federal taxes at $10,000. Many residents of states that routinely vote for Democrats dislike the limit.

Pelosi says the move — which would include making it retroactive for the tax years of 2018 and 2019 — would give Americans “more disposable income, which is the lifeblood of our economy, a consumer economy that we are.”

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said it’s a terrible idea.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/03/pelosi-makes-tax-break-for-millionaires-a-priority-in-fourth-stimulus-package/