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.
Will Hill, MBA, is the owner of Will Hill Consults LLC. Prior to launching his consulting business, he was senior product marketing manager at Thomson Reuters.
Ben Henry-Moreland is a senior financial planning nerd at Kitces.com, where he researches and writes for the Nerd’s Eye View blog, using his experience as a financial planner and a solo advisory firm owner to help fulfill the site’s mission of making financial advisors better and more successful. In addition to his work at Kitces.com, Ben serves clients at his RIA firm, Freelance Financial Planning.
First elected to Congress in 1992, Carolyn B. Maloney represents New York's 12th District as a Democrat. She is currently Chairwoman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform and former Chair of the Joint Economic Committee, the first woman to hold both of these positions.
“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.