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.
Raju Seetharaman is Senior Vice President, IT and Transformation of Legal & General America’s insurance division, which includes operating companies Banner Life Insurance Company and William Penn Life Insurance Company of New York. He is responsible for IT and Transformation strategy, IT operations and change management with the mission to combine business strategy with cutting-edge IT expertise, to deliver efficient, effective solutions that helps Legal & General America achieve a market-leading position. Raju is an Engineering Graduate and lives with his wife Nirmala, in North Potomac, MD.
Randall Shepard, CPA, is a partner at The Bonadio Group. He has been providing professional and personal consulting and auditing services to his clients for over 25 years. As government practice leader, he oversees all of the services provided to government entities throughout the firm.
Wes Erlam is Director of Urban Regeneration at Legal & General Capital, one of the UK’s leading financial services groups and a major global investor, with international businesses in the U.S., Europe, Middle East and Asia, with some $1.8 trillion in assets under management.
“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.