Everyone wants schools to open but Congress and the Trump administration don’t want to pay for it. That cost includes reduced class sizes for social distancing, additional teachers, cleaning services, nurses, ventilation improvements, personal protective equipment, and whatever is recommended by CDC.
In places where the disease is out of control, reopening will not be possible. First control the disease, then reopen schools. Trump could start the process by wearing a mask in public, whenever he is in public. His refusal to do so has spread the virus by encouraging his admirers to do as he does, which violates the strong advice of medical professionals.
Where reopening is possible, Congress must foot the bill because the stayes’s coffers have been depleted by the economic toll of the pandemic.
Thus far, Congress has been generous to high-income individuals and employers, but stingy with the nation’s schools, as David Dayen of “The American Prospect” explains here. To see the links and open them, go to his post here.
Dayen writes:
As we head into crunch time on coronavirus relief, the demands coming from the White House threaten to upset the entire deal. Donald Trump remains obsessed with a payroll tax cut, which nobody in Congress, really, wants. Any payroll tax cut with any real impact on people—a three-month holiday would run around $300 billion—would cut deeply into the other White House demand for a relief bill topping out at no more than $1 trillion.
The proper amount of spending for this bill is “whatever it takes.” If you don’t like the cost, maybe you shouldn’t have completely botched the policy response such that major regions of the country have to shut down again. The same people whining about expense are the ones who drove the country into despair. The cost of a continued runaway virus is much higher than the cost of emergency measures to ensure millions of people have adequate food and shelter during this crisis.
But if you really, really must constrain the response, and you really, really must have this payroll tax cut, then I have an idea: get rid of all the other long-term tax cuts mostly targeted toward the rich, many of them passed in the very last coronavirus relief bill.
They don’t get much discussion but there were a host of tax provisions in the CARES Act, passed in March. In fact there was a payroll tax holiday, but for the employer side, not the employee. Not only can employers delay payroll taxes to next year, they can eliminate them if they retain employees. The two measures are estimated at about $66 billion, and the savings falls on the business.
A bigger tax break has been termed the “Millionaire’s Giveaway” by Americans for Tax Fairness. This $135 billion tax break allows people with partnerships or other structures to carry forward losses from previous years and offset gains in their taxes in future years. It only affects people making half a million dollars in income from the partnership or more. The same type of deduction for businesses costs another $25 billion; the oil and gas industry in particular has been using that one, converting their losses in recent years into corporate welfare checks. There’s also an interest deduction available to larger corporations ($13 billion). Certain aviation taxes were suspended ($4 billion); see if that shows up in a lower ticket fare.
Add it up and that’s $243 billion in tax giveaways to rich people and corporations in the CARES Act. If the White House wants a payroll tax cut it can come out of that. Most of the benefits from those changes don’t hit until next year and the payment of 2020 taxes, and beyond. It makes sense to pull up spending (tax breaks are spending through the tax code) to when it’s needed now.
The Heroes Act, the House Democratic bill, actually accomplished a form of this, by cancelling the Millionaire’s Giveaway permanently, as it was due under the Trump tax cuts to come back in 2026 anyway. That brings in $246 billion overall, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, enough for a decent-sized payroll tax holiday.
And as long as we’re talking about the Trump tax cuts, we could eliminate the measures most tilted to the rich and powerful—the corporate tax cut, the S-corporation pass through for rich people who set up partnerships, the deducations for dividends on foreign earnings, and the inheritance tax cuts—and take in about $3 trillion. If the next relief bill simply has to be capped at $1 trillion, then you could do $4 trillion in spending and add these measures in and hit that number.
Again, I think it’d be ridiculous to offset anything for emergency relief. But playing by the rules set up by the White House isn’t an obstacle, thanks to the trillions of dollars in offsets Trump created with his tax law. There is also a case to be made that rebalancing the inequality baked into the tax code is good public policy anyway, and if it can facilitate critical crisis spending under the stupid strictures of straitjacket budget politics, all the better.
Unfortunately, Chuck Schumer is trying to leverage the new bill to get a tax cut for well-off people, particularly in his own state, by removing the cap on the state and local tax deduction imposed in the Trump tax cuts. That was also in the Heroes Act (albeit just a two-year suspension). There’s no need whatsoever for this kind of long-term help for people who itemize when the unemployed and the poor are in desperate trouble right now. Wealthy people don’t need another champion to engage in special pleading for them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A “payroll tax cut” would undermine Social Security, something Republicans have wished to do forever. It is NOT acceptable in any way. In fact, the payroll tax ought to be extended to include ALL, rather than just some, of the income of the 1%.
Exactly! Congress used payroll tax cut trick in 2014 or 15. It was one of the Grand Bargain deals the Republicans & Democrats disguised as a gift to workers to put more money in their pockets.
What it really did was cut the amount of required corporate FICA match money to the Social Security fund. Deficit hawks in Congress & the administration have been wanting to privatize Social Security for decades. It wasn’t until Bill Clinton agreed with Newt Gingrich to impose cuts to SS that moved Democrats into the entitlement cuts camp.
I’m happy to see some Dems jump off the entitlement cuts bandwagon by talking about increasing social security.
Some years ago, someone said that democracy was impossible because people would undermine it by voting themselves benefits and the economy could never bear it. Conservative pundits have quoted this axiom so much that I have forgotten who said it or what its context was. Now with the antics of the Republican party since Reagan, we see that this axiom is true. But it is true for exactly the opposite reason livrertarians and their fiscal conservative allies who do not claim their seat of irresponsibility claim that it is true. Far from the great majority of people voting themselves money, what is occurring under Trump highlights the fact that most of the tax law is being written for and by a small group of people who benefit from them excessively to the detriment of general society.
Who has the time to understand the intricate nature of the tax code? Those with enough money to hire people to review it and find places in it to alter it to their benefit. Lawyers do not come cheap. Knowledge is expensive if there is a lot of money in it. What has been occurring over the past 40 years is a continual erosion of the tax structure to benefit a few very wealthy citizens. Some of them have admitted this openly, calling for “taxes on people like me” in the public forum. Most, however, are content to watch the children of the less fortunate than themselves sit in unventilated classrooms reading torn textbooks. Coronavirus has let the cat out of the bag. Their antics are now exposed. The vast relief package and the continued plots to pile more money into the coffers of the wealthy under the guise of keeping people employed has laid bare the problems with this approach.
This November, we need to begin the march to the middle. Biden may not be the guy you want, but he is a step in the direction of good faith government. Some will tell you that there is no good government. This has been the lie that has been the underlayment for the carpet of lies that has led us to this point. Good government involves fairness foa all citizens. Even autocrats from the past like Suleyman of the Ottoman Empire and Fredrick the Great of Prussia understood this. When autocrats of the past became incompetent in the production of bread for the masses, the result was often violent revolution.
In our state, senate candidates for Lamar Alexander’s seat are trying to terrify the voters with the spectre of violence in the street. “We will get tough,” is the refrain. Getting competent would be more effective. Just ask some of the autocrats of the past.
Roy,
Our politics prove the axiom wrong. Poor people and lower middle class people do not vote their self interest. If they did, Bernie would be the nominee, not Biden. If they did, Trump would never have been elected. I have often wondered why some people actually vote against their self interest. I have a brother who could not survive without federal programs like Social Security and Medicare, yet he votes for Trump, who would abolish them if he could. The same for people who need and rely on Obamacare, yet vote for candidates trying to eliminate it.
My husband is of the opinion that a large chunk of Americans simply “don’t want anyone telling them what to do.” Hence: anti-taxes, anti-“govt handouts,” anti-regs, anti-mask-wearing.
I grew up rural, where the general motto seemed to be “Leave me alone,” & living off the grid was admired. It’s a poor man’s pride: I owe you nothing, you owe me nothing, I survive on my own wits. Goes back to settler days; it’s deep-seated and defies logic: the worse the economy, the more they insist on it. Which is why it has become an ever-louder voice in our politics.
During World War 2, there was a General spirit of national unity, of sacrifice for the common good. FDR was able to draw upon and encourage that spirit. Trump doesn’t know what it is.
Before my mother got married, she was planning to have a bridal shower. My grandfather, [Dad’s side] went around to all the neighbors and told them not to come. He didn’t believe getting gifts. My mother never forgave him.
well said: deep-seated and defies logic
I believe the axiom true for those who have lawyers to find ways to take advantage of the tax code. Ironically, those who do this use the axiom to suggest that the great masses of people are the ones who are “voting themselves money.” Or perhaps this is not ironic. The Standard operating procedure of the present administration is to accuse its opponents of doing what the administration itself is deeply into. Classic projection.
I’ve always been able to deduct medical expenses UNTIL this ‘great tax break for the middle class’ was passed at 1:00AM in the morning with no discussion.
I do a lot of alternative medicine work and none of it is paid for by medicare. So, this year I had $8,000 in medical expenses and NONE of it was deductible. According to my tax lady, I would have had to have listed $13,000 in medical expenses to have it as a deduction.
This great tax cut for the wealthy is screwing the middle class.
From “Social Security Works”: “Washington politicians love to make accessing benefits complicated. That’s why Social Security is so popular: it’s simple and universal. Instead of creating an intricate scenario of qualified unemployment benefits and tax cuts that weaken Social Security, we should just give everyone money to stay home and suppress the virus.
Remember: Eliminating Social Security’s dedicated revenue is a trap for the Biden administration. Trump has already indicated that he’d like to defund Social Security permanently.[2] If this so-called “payroll tax cut” expires at the end of the year, it will set up a confrontation in the first days of the new Democratic presidency, where Republicans will claim Biden wants to raise taxes by 12%, just by returning things to normal!
In that dangerous scenario, the corporate media could seek some middle ground where Social Security funding is restored, but not at its full levels, which would weaken Social Security’s financing long-term. That sets the stage for the TRUST Act’s advocates to cut our benefits behind closed doors without accountability.