Building a better, stronger, Democrat infrastructure
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walter duranty award winner, 1999
A massive subsidy for a dying, obsolete business model, but still a powerful tool in the propaganda arsenal of the Woke.
House Democrats have expanded a controversial proposal to subsidize local news outlets, offering in the latest version of their massive spending bill payroll tax credits to newspapers and TV broadcasters that employ up to 1,500 journalists.
The provision, included in a version of the Build Back Better Act released Wednesday, would give payroll tax credits of up to $12,500 for each employee at qualifying outlets. A previous version of the bill set the threshold to qualify for the subsidies at 750 employees. That version also did not propose subsidies for TV broadcasters.
Democrats last week stripped the newsroom subsidy from the bill but on Tuesday quietly added it back in. Democratic leaders revised the bill as Republicans and some moderate Democrats balked at the Build Back Better Act's $3.5 trillion price tag. The Joint Committee on Taxation said the initial proposal would cost $1.3 billion over the next decade.
Republicans have come out against the proposed subsidy, calling it a politically motivated bail out for the Democrat-friendly industry. More than 80 percent of journalists said they were liberal or Democrats, according to one recent study.
Democrats hope the subsidy will rescue local newspapers, which over the past two decades have seen subscriptions plummet amid a shift to web-based outlets. The number of newspaper employees fell by 57 percent from 2008 to 2020, and more than 1,800 newspapers have gone out of business since 2004.
