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.
Susan Krause Bell is managing director at Promontory Financial Group. She is a former Senior Deputy Comptroller for Bank Supervisory Policy at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Robert Mancini is head of U.S. payments for Finastra.
Jeremy King is principal and co-founder of Crafted ERP. He began his career in investment banking and corporate development where he focused on the technology and manufacturing industries. He went on to hold senior executive roles in the finance, e-commerce, and software industries, including as the CFO of a publicly traded software company. Eventually, he took over the national technology and management consulting practice of a Top 20 CPA firm where he learned the intricacies of the craft beverage industry and identified a desperate need for modern technology solutions. He co-founded Crafted ERP in 2017 as a solution for breweries, wineries, distilleries and more.
“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.