GOP blocks Democrats’ bid for $2K payments Trump demanded

House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to pay most Americans $2,000 to help weather the coronavirus pandemic.

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.

CORONAVIRUS IMPACT: ADDITIONAL COVERAGE
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Dustin Hostetler is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and the co-founder and visionary of Transformity Solutions LLC. He is a nationally recognized speaker and pioneer in applying the Lean and Six Sigma concepts to public accounting firms. He has a BSBA in Finance from The Ohio State University and earned both his Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and Master Black Belt certifications from Kent State University.

James Duffy V is a summer reporting associate for American Banker based in Los Angeles.

Natasha Shifrin is the Global Outbound Sales Director at Hibob and joined the company in 2020. She has been working at SaaS startup companies for nearly a decade, and Hibob is the fourth high-growth business that she has joined. In her previous roles, and at Hibob, she has remained focused on top of funnel revenue generation and is fascinated with the humanity behind the science of sales. She believes that everyone brings something different to the table, and the key to building teams is understanding how all those different pieces can work and integrate together to build a strong group. Natasha was born in London, spent time living in New York, and now resides in Tel Aviv.

“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.

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A runner stands near the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Oliver Contreras/Bloomberg

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.