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.
Mark Bodenstab is a director of research & development tax credit services at KBKG, operating out of New Hampshire. He brings knowledge of many aspects of R&D from his 20+ years in the private sector as well as 14 years with the Internal Revenue Service. He joined the IRS as a general engineer to provide technical and valuation support in the examination of large corporate tax filings. He has experience in a wide range of engineering issues, including the complicated credit for increasing research. He was selected as a manager to supervise a team of IRS engineers and appraisers. During this time, he also served in a national role as staff assistant to the director of field operations. Prior to the IRS, he worked for over 20 years in the industrial gas industry, gaining first-hand experience in research and development testing and improving products and processes. He was involved with the early-stage development and delivery of cryogenic services for the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) marketplace, container pressurization in the national beverage marketplace, and the manufacturing and delivery of pipeline atmospheric gases to multiple chemical, steel and glass manufacturers.
So far there have been over 200 COVID-19-related disclosures, according to Diver by Lumesis, a financial technology company.
One possible move is getting rid of the limit on state and local tax deductions, or SALT, that was part of the 2017 tax overhaul.
“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.