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.
James Fritz is chief information security officer at NFP. Prior to this role, he helped migrate companies to the cloud, as well as for the U.S. Army, where he conducted defensive cyberspace operations. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the United States Military Academy and earned an MBA from Syracuse University.
Rich Saskal is a managing editor of The Bond Buyer. Since joining the publication in 2003, he has also worked as a reporter and as its Far West bureau chief. He has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Colorado and a bachelor's degree from the University of Virginia.
Scott Herman, President of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe
“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.