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.
Charles E. Davis, PhD, CPA, CMA, CGMA, is a Professor of Accounting at Baylor University. He has published numerous academic and practitioner articles, as well as a managerial accounting textbook now in its 4thedition. He currently serves on the Strategic Finance Editorial Review Board and is a past member of the AICPA’s Accounting Education Executive Committee and Precertification Education Executive Committee. Timothy Lindquist, PhD, is the PricewaterhouseCoopers Professor of Accounting at the University of Northern Iowa. Having previously served on the editorial board of Issues in Accounting Education, he has published numerous research articles in a mix of high-level academic journals and high-impact practitioner journals. His experience in higher education spans nearly 40 years. Joseph Ugrin PhD, CPA, is the Deloitte Professor of Accounting and head of the Department of Accounting at the University of Northern Iowa. He has published nearly two dozen research articles and serves as the associate editor for Advances in Accounting and on the editorial boards for the Journal of Information Systems and the Accounting Educators Journal. He is a CPA and the past chair of the AICPA’s Precertification Education Executive Committee.
“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.