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.
Jeff Canfield is Head of Innovation at the Argo Group, where he seeks to transform ideas into measurable change. Prior to his current role, Canfield served as SVP and head of E&S Casualty at Colony Specialty, also a part of Argo Group. Before joining Colony in 2016, he served as senior vice president and product line leader of excess casualty at Aspen Insurance. Prior to that, he served as profit lines manager for excess casualty national accounts at AIG. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from the University of Richmond in Virginia.
Glenn Wisegarver is founder and CEO of Sigma IQ Inc., which makes an account reconciliation platform powered by AI.
Penny Crosman is Executive Editor, Technology at American Banker. She is based in New York. She guides technology coverage at American Banker and other Arizent brands. She also hosts the American Banker podcast and from time to time writes about artificial intelligence and related tech topics.
Prior to taking on this role, she was Editor in Chief of Bank Technology News. She has held senior editorial roles at Bank Systems & Technology, Wall Street & Technology, Intelligent Enterprise, Network Magazine and Imaging Magazine.
“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.