Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff came out in favor of a partisan COVID-19 relief package put forth by Speaker Pelosi. The price tag on the ‘HEROES Act’ is a whopping $3 trillion of taxpayer dollars, but the 1,815 page piece of legislation would not actually deliver relief to Americans suffering economic distress from COVID-19. Speaker Pelosi’s bill would allocate an additional $25 billion to the United States Postal Service (USPS) and $250 billion to ‘alternative energy’ while also delivering taxpayer-funded aid checks to illegal immigrants.
-- $3.6 BILLION for “contingency planning, preparation, and resilience of elections for Federal office.”
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 12, 2020
-- HOUSING ASSISTANCE … $75 BILLION
-- $1.5 BILLION for broadband hotspots.
-- $10 BILLION for small businesses.
-- $25 BILLION for the Postal Service.
The HEROES Act received the most bipartisan criticism for lifting the cap on state and local income tax (SALT) deductions, which limits the ability for residents in high-tax states to deduct local taxes off of their federal tax returns. The 2017 tax cuts signed into law by President Trump implemented a $10,000 cap on SALT deductions; lifting the cap would overwhelmingly benefit Americans in the highest tax brackets, not average Americans experiencing financial hardship on account of the economic damage caused by COVID-19. A handful of House Democrats in Speaker Pelosi’s own caucus opposed the bill due to the partisan wish-list items buried in the legislation, but Ossoff encouraged the Senate to take up the HEROES Act.
Speaker Pelosi’s hyper partisan legislation puts wealthy donors in the top tax brackets before middle-class Americans, and overwhelmingly benefits blue states. Ossoff's support of the HEROES Act goes hand-in-hand with his history of being bankrolled by wealthy, out-of-state donors. His initial run for Congress in 2017 was bolstered by donations from liberals in California, and Ossoff's Senate campaign is heavily financed by states other than Georgia, per FEC filings.
Lifting the cap on SALT deductions is a "non-starter" for most Republican lawmakers, and Congress' Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that repealing the cap would overwhelmingly benefit households earning $1 million or more per year over middle-class Americans.