Free Republic

After holding the tax bill hostage, House Republicans from high-tax states have extorted an enormous increase in the state-and-local tax deduction—not that they will get much credit for it. Unlike the bill’s pro-growth provisions, this giveaway to the affluent will have no economic payoff and subsidizes profligate Democratic-run states. Speaker Mike Johnson late Tuesday greased the wheels for the reconciliation bill’s passage by cutting a deal with Republicans from New York, New Jersey and California to raise the state-and-local deduction to $40,000 with a 1% annual inflation adjustment over 10 years. The deduction would be phased out starting at $500,000...

By Scott Wong, Sahil Kapur, Kyle Stewart and Syedah Asghar WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives on Thursday morning narrowly passed a massive domestic policy package, a major victory for President Donald Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., after weeks of heated negotiations within the GOP. The multitrillion-dollar tax-cut and spending measure now heads to the Senate, where Republicans have vowed to change it. Following hours of overnight debate, the vote on final passage in the House was 215-214, with two Republicans — Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio — joining all Democrats present in opposition....

For the nearly 19 million people around the world who’ve contracted COVID-19 thus far during the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the millions more taking so many precautions to keep themselves and their loved ones safe from the COVID-19 virus, a coronavirus vaccine can’t come fast enough. Indeed, the promise of ending this thing, and of getting to whatever’s on the other side of the pandemic, can be summed in one word for those people and for all of us, really: A vaccine. President Trump insisted, no doubt aggressively so, on Geraldo Rivera’s radio program on Thursday that a coronavirus...