TIME magazine has a depressing expose about the $160 billion in tax breaks that the CARES Act awards to the real estate industry, including the family business of Jared Kushner.
The CARES Act is the coronavirus relief package of $2 trillion intended to save mom-and-pop businesses and other small businesses at risk of failing due to the prolonged shutdown.
When Democrats realized that the real estate moguls had pulled a fast one, they wrote repeal legislation that has no chance of passing in the Senate.
TIME’s analysis of drafts of the bills and lobbying disclosures, along with interviews with half a dozen staffers and lobbyists, show that the provisions originated with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s office, which was working with other Republicans on the committee, and were lobbied for heavily by the real estate industry, including a prominent real estate trade group, of which Jared Kushner’s family’s company is a member…
Jared Kushner’s family’s company, Kushner Companies, is a member of NMHC’s advisory committee, according to the organization’s website. That membership appears to be the lowest level of membership and requires an annual fee of $5,000. The NMHC website also lists Avi Lebor, Kushner Companies’ director of acquisitions, as the contact for the company on the membership directory. Lebor was in prison with Kushner’s father and joined Kushner Companies after they were both released, according to Bloomberg. The Trump Organization, which will also benefit from the tax provisions, is not publicly listed as a member of NMHC.
War profiteers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Democrats, who say they were not lobbied about the provisions, told TIME that they knew the provisions were in the bill, but did not understand the extent of their impact until after the law had passed.”
These bills are designed to be so complex and montage-like that no single staffer or member of Congress can understand what is in them. They are passed with no time to think about the implications. If they can legislators on anything, it is a snippet and staffers do almost all of the work. Lobbyists are really skilled in how to employ the arts of deception in this environment. Think of ALEC at scale with lobbyists offering ready to use packets of legislation to any tired taker or staffer.
My experience is limited, but people I know who have worked in DC as part of the bureaucracy have said that deadlines are a gold-mine for lobbyists and legislators. A rush to legislate is an invitation to ripoffs, profits, and power.
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I have seen legislation before and after it passed. It’s impossible to understand what’s in it unless you are a professional and know how to follow all the additions and deletions. I never mastered it.
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These are the people we are putting our faith in the recover from the trump disaster? I do not believe they didn’t understand it. There are loads of giveaways even in their own bill. Like telling newly unemployed who lose health care they can buy into Cobra which is a gift to health insurance industry which owns them which is why they don’t support Medicare for all. Many will truly be holding their noses when they vote.
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How stupid are the Democrats? Outfoxed and outboxed. There is no excuse. Pelosi and Schumer getvan F.
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One of my daughters is married to a wonderful man, a superb husband and father, an incredibly hard-working fellow who does a difficult, demanding job running his own small business as an arborist. He’s the fellow you call when a tree falls onto your house. They applied for the small business assistance right away but were told that the program was out of funds.
Steve Munchkin (wearing lederhosen):
We represent the oligarch guild,
the oligarch guild, the oligarch guild,
and in the name of the oligarch guild,
we’d like to welcome you to Grifterland.
All citizens are marks in Grifterland.
But ofc the consulting firms got the heads up on this bill before anyone else, and they already had their big clients lined up to take the cash.
Another day in the life of the banana republic that the Disunited States has become.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KSiyaqnZYs
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My daughter’s husband had hoped to use the small business relief funding to keep his few employees on despite the downturn in business. This is, ofc, is what the fund was nominally supposed to make possible. As it is, he’s done that, but at considerable cost to his own family. @&@$(**%@#&@%&!!!!!!!
But hey, Jared is making out on the deal.
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I could finally get my son to the barber shop since she has been closed (or partially open for essential personnel). She is out $16,000 right now. She got her stimulus check but still hasn’t heard about the unemployment funds which she filed for weeks ago. She’s a good business person and has always worked hard and marketed herself well which is why she has been able to survive AND pay for her health insurance during the closure. She is angry because Wall St gets help before Main St every single time. There is always the government “work around” that screws the little guy.
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Many small businesses could be saved with a grant of $25,000. But millions are going to big corporations, also to charter schools, which have suffered no loss of revenue.
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Nancy Pelosi should have called it the “Who CARES?” Act.
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Sadly, the only Democrat voting ‘no” was AOC.
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The Who CARES? Act
AO cares, that’s who.
No one else in view
Very sad , but true
Bound to make you blue
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Should be AOCares
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“Blue no matter who”
We’ll be blue
No matter who
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That’s called “re-verse”
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I like AOC immensely and this comment is not a condemnation of her, but she could afford to vote no and “make a statement” by doing so because she knew the bill would pass anyway. Every bill that passes has crap like this in it. Either it goes unnoticed or is the price of getting some of what you want. Legislators do not have the luxury of long drawn out fights right now. People need relief immediately if not sooner even if it’s far from perfect. I would like to think people will be more careful about decisions they make about voting. There are’nt going to be any quick fixes for the mess we have gotten ourselves into.
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Whether AOC could “afford to” vote no has not yet been determined.
Her primary challenger has been harshly critical of the vote, which was entirely predictable. AOC undoubtedly knew that would be the case.
Michelle Caruso-Cabrera
“If she really cared, she wouldn’t be telling the poorest people in her district not to go back to work like she did earlier this week.”She’s out of touch to tell people who are desperate for food that they shouldn’t go back to work. How out of touch can you be? She clearly hasn’t talked to her constituents.”
Her vote was certainly not made any easier by the fact that no other Democrat joined her. AOC was undoubtedly under enormous pressure from Pelosi and others to vote yes in this case.
Her no vote is exceedingly rare.
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Nancy Pelosi is a savvy politician. There was absolutely no reason to pressure AOC to vote with “the team” when the votes were already overwhelmingly there, and Nancy is not one to waste political capital. Of course AOC’s opponent is going to spin this as being out of touch with her constituents. I would like to hear AOC’s response on the ground in her district.
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Of course her opponent would say what she did.
But that’s precisely the point. AOC knew her vote would create a re-election problem for her and nonetheless voted no anyway.
And the “afford to” comment is simply an assumption that remains to be shown.
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We can agree to disagree on this one. 🙂
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Be careful what you say about Pelosi or you may get blasted and called a “right wing troll”! All of this has been going on for a few decades now, but Americans have been too occupied making the big bucks, racing their kids to the top and shopping till they drop to take notice. Now with a full stop, everyone gets to see what we have allowed to happen while being preoccupied. Life is very unfair for most. Little by little (and quietly), most of the tax money has been diverted to private business and equity and people can’t understand how it got this way. Both sides of the gov’t took advantage or created the diversion in a get rich scheme that no one except a policy wonk can untangle. This is why all the crazy conspiracy theories lately…..everyone is trying to make sense of something that they think happened overnight, when in reality, the scheme has been happening for years and they just didn’t notice while living within it and unknowingly participating in the process.
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Right wing Troll
A right wing troll am I
I really can’t deny
I troll for Alex Jones
And like to throw him bones
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Welcome to our corupt government!
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Thanks for sharing, well explained Care Act.
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