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.
Todd Zywicki is George Mason University Foundation Professor of Law at Antonin Scalia Law School and affiliated scholar at the International Center for Law & Economics.
Chris Olson co-founded The Media Trust with a goal to transform the internet experience by creating better digital ecosystems to govern assets, connect partners and enable digital risk management. Chris has more than 15 years of experience leading high tech and ad technology start-ups and managing international software development, product and sales teams. Prior to The Media Trust, Chris created an Internet-based transaction system to research, buy and sell media for TV, radio, cable, and online channels. He started his career managing equity and fixed income electronic trading desks for Salomon Brothers, Citibank and Commerzbank AG.
Srividya (Sri) serves Customer Insights Professionals. She leads a team of analysts focusing on helping businesses collect, manage, analyze, and apply customer data to win, serve, and retain customers. Specifically, her team focuses on advanced analytics, predictive analytics, customer analytics, business intelligence, and artificial intelligence.
Previously, Sri was a senior analyst on the Customer Insights team, focusing on customer analytics best practices and technologies, services, and analytical applications that help firms convert customer data into meaningful insights. Sri continues to help marketing clients address their customer analytics needs, map out customer intelligence requirements and strategies, and navigate the analytics technology and services landscape.
Previous Work Experience
Sri has over 10 years' experience in marketing and customer analytics, product management, marketing management, and business analysis on both the client and agency side. Prior to Forrester, she managed digital media measurement and analytics for multiple clients across verticals at Allen & Gerritsen, a Boston-based advertising agency. Previously, she worked at Cognizant, a global provider of information technology, consulting, and business process outsourcing services managing marketing communications programs. Prior to Cognizant, Sri worked at Sify Technologies — an India-based Internet service provider — managing the consumer broadband product portfolio including planning, executing, and measuring multichannel marketing campaigns.
Education
Srividya holds an M.S. in integrated marketing communications with a specialization in customer and marketing analytics from Northwestern University, Chicago, and an MBA from India.
“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.