A plan to offer federal payroll tax credits to help pay the salaries of local journalists is still in play as budget bills advance — but it faces a giant hurdle.
When I last wrote about it three weeks ago, the measure, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, was included in the House draft of a $3.5 trillion spending bill. Advocates hoped that the Senate would quickly follow suit. Optimism was running high.
That quick resolution didn’t happen, of course, and the target total from the Biden administration has been cut in half to a $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill.
