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.
There are signs of a slowdown in the economic recovery as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to spread.
As Head of Risk Management, Laura Levenstein has responsibility for BAM's risk management strategy and its oversight, including acting as chair of the Enterprise Risk Committee. Laura also serves on the Management, Underwriting and Credit Policy and Surveillance Committees. Before joining BAM, she was Senior Managing Director for Global Public, Project and Infrastructure Finance, which includes US public finance, global sub-sovereign, sovereign, project and infrastructure finance, at Moody's Investors Service. In that position, as part of the evaluation of the various rated entities, she was responsible for evaluating all types of risk in these sectors to the extent it could impact the entities' credit profiles. Laura was also responsible for managing all aspects of the rating business relevant to those sectors including, rating assignment, rating methodologies, process operations, strategy, financial performance, rating quality and reputational risks. Prior positions in her over 20-year career at Moody's included Senior Managing Director for Americas and Global Financial Institutions. Laura holds a B.A. in Mathematics from Cornell University.
Avani M. Desai is president at Top 100 Firm Schellman & Co. Inc., and a member of the ISACA.
“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.