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.
Wenbo Li is a manager at Simon Kucher.
Joel Syder is a data analyst and IT consultant at AcademicBrits. He says he thrives when helping people to realize their potential in the exciting field of information technology.
Neil Barton is the chief technology officer at WhereScape, a leading provider of data infrastructure automation software, where he leads the long-term architecture and technology vision for the company's software products. Barton has held a variety of roles over the past 20 years, including positions at Oracle Australia and Sequent Computer Systems, focused on software architecture, data warehousing and business intelligence. Barton is a co-inventor of three US patents related to business intelligence software solutions.
“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.