House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to pay most Americans $2,000 to help weather the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans objected to the bill House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sought to pass by unanimous consent Thursday to replace the $600 payments in the latest pandemic relief legislation with the $2,000 payments.
Michael Heinrich is founder and CEO ofOh My Green, a concierge-style provider of healthy food and wellness services for corporations of all sizes. Following several demanding jobs where he spent afternoons sluggish and tired after sugar-crashing on M&Ms and soda, he was inspired to create a business focused on making workplace food offerings more nutritious, healthy and delicious.
Jennifer Curry is senior vice president of global cloud services at INAP. She is an operational and technology leader with over 17 years of experience in the IT industry, including seven years in the hosting/cloud market.
Russel Davis is chief technology officer and chief operating officer at Vcinity. He has over 25 years of experience in management, operational and technical leadership roles ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies. Prior to joining Vcinity, he was COO and CTO of Bay Microsystems, the co-founder and COO of a well-funded venture developing telecommunications hardware and the service platform managing NFC devices and transactions for transportation and payment systems. He also served as CTO and VP of Product Development for CIC (public company), Director of Services for Everex Systems (acquired by FPG), Field Services Engineering Management at Centel Information Systems (acquired by Sprint) and supervised onboard Electronic Warfare operations in the US Navy.
“House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly fought for bigger checks for the American people, which House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected — first, during our negotiations when they said that they would not go above $600 and now, with this act of callousness on the Floor,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.
Democrats will try again with a roll call vote on a new bill Dec. 28, when the House also plans a vote to override Trump’s veto on the National Defense Authorization Act. Since current government spending runs out that day — and funds for the rest of the fiscal year are included in the virus relief bill Trump criticized and hasn’t signed -- the House could also pass another stopgap measure to avert a partial government shutdown.
Republicans on Thursday tried to seek unanimous consent on a measure to examine taxpayer money spent on foreign aid, but Democrats blocked that move. In his complaint Tuesday about Congress’s combined virus aid and government spending bill, Trump criticized federal resources spent on international programs, even though that spending was allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process.