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.
Srinivasa Vegi serves as president of data analytics and artificial intelligence at DMI, where he is responsible for business strategy, practice building and global project delivery. With 25-plus years of experience in information systems and 18-plus years of experience specific to data analytics, Dr. Vegi provides strategic guidance for customers to tame big data and achieve success using business intelligence, predictive analytics, AI and machine learning.
Prior to joining DMI, Dr. Vegi was at Wipro, in various capacities as head of analytics practice, APAC , head of analytics for global media and telecommunications, VP and head of the Integrated Solutions Group for Analytics Service Line and subsequently for the healthcare and lifesciences business unit.
As an accomplished business leader in strategic planning and execution, he excels at building niche competencies, delivering large transformational programs supporting growth and leveraging digital, big data, and cloud technologies impacting business outcomes. Dr. Vegi has helped many companies across varied business domains in their efforts to deploy data and analytics solutions.
Dr. Vegi earned his Ph.D. in computer science from Andhra University and his Bachelors in civil engineering from the National Institute of Technology, both in India. He has had several articles featured in trade journals.
Eileen Iles is a partner at Crowe, a consulting, technology and public accounting company.
William J. Rossi is a partner at Koss Olinger where he began his financial services career in 1997. His areas of expertise are investment management, estate planning, and creating income distribution strategies during retirement.
“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.