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.
Eric Ly is the Founder and CEO of KarmaCheck, a first-of-its-kind company that uses data-driven technology to bring truth, speed, and efficiency to background checks. Ly is the cofounder of LinkedIn, a social networking platform, where he served as the chief technology officer. Ly helped launch LinkedIn from a strategic perspective and assisted with the architecture and implementation of specific aspects of the networking and search algorithms. Ly even acted as the vice president of desktop, building a team of professionals to lead the desktop integrations. Ly attended Stanford University, where he earned his bachelor of science in symbolic systems, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned his master of science in media arts and sciences. After earning his MS, Ly returned to Stanford to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science. After co-founding LinkedIn, Ly founded Presdo, Hub, KarmaCheck, and several other companies.
“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.