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.
Martin Cheek is a vice president and SmartSearch.
Ma. Contesa Pagulayan is a Program Specialist, Social Impact at Atlassian focusing on Remote Teams Engagement (prior to the pandemic!) and Engagement Data. Tesa is currently based in Manila. Outside of Atlassian, she is currently pursuing her graduate studies in Indigenous Psychology, focusing on Philippine Psychology at the University of the Philippines. She's been with Atlassian for four years now, spending two years within the Recruitment and People teams before moving to her current role.
Peter Rasmussen, MD, is Chief Clinical Officer, The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, and Professor of Neurosurgery, Department of Neurosurgery, Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Rasmussen received his bachelor of science in biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1987. He earned his medical degree from the University of Wisconsin Medical School in 1991. Dr. Rasmussen is a past-President of the Society of Neurointerventional Surgery where he played a leading role on the national stage in continuing society initiatives to resource, train and support veteran and new practitioners in an area of medicine that is transforming treatment approaches to neurovascular conditions.
“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.