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
Capitol building in Washington, D.C.
Michael Cohn
May 22, 2020 2:13 PM

A bipartisan group of lawmakers has introduced legislation to close a loophole in the CARES Act.

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Prateek Vijayvergia leads the technology team at Xceedance and spearheads large-scale transformation programs across insurance functions such as underwriting, catastrophe modeling, policy service, and claims for re/insurers worldwide. He brings more than 16 years of proven property/casualty insurance domain experience in managing enterprise technology, data science, automation and insurtech initiatives.

With specialization in advancing strategic technology-driven initiatives for insurance industry participants, Prateek has successfully delivered numerous projects, including new business launch, customer-centric platform design, post-merger and separation IT consolidation, legacy platform overhaul, and geo-specific regulatory compliance. Prior to Xceedance, Prateek worked at organizations such as IBM, RBS, and Syntel, and was responsible for the design and delivery of major digital transformation programs.

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Charles Marshall is a tax software consultant at Wolters Kluwer.

“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.