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.
.Juan Hernandez is CEO of Openfinance.
Ane Ohm, CPA, is a former Big Four auditor and now CEO of LeaseCrunch, which provides cloud-based lease accounting software for CPA firms. Previous roles include CEO of HarQen CEO, president of LaserNet (acquired by Apex),vice president at Cielo, and vice president at Strong Financial Corp. She started her career as an auditor with Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) after graduating from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Marc Jeffreys is General Manager – Health for Gradient AI, a leading provider of customized artificial intelligence solutions for the insurance industry. The company's full-cycle management platforms help improve loss ratios and profitability by predicting underwriting and claims risks with heightened accuracy and reduce quote turnaround times and claim expenses through intelligent automation.
Jeffreys' 30-year career includes extensive experience in the health insurance and financial services segments. At Gradient-AI, he oversees all facets of the Group Health business unit, including customer engagement, strategic direction and innovations development.
“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.