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.
Claude A. Hanley Jr. is a partner at Capital Performance Group.
Paola Peralta is an Associate Editor at Employee Benefit News and has been with the team for five years. She is a proud UCF journalism graduate who got her start through a Dow Jones News Fund business internship and has since spent the majority of her career covering technology, healthcare, financial wellness and professional development across various industries.
Paola is especially passionate about telling stories that focus around workplace culture and employee experience such as Gen Z's struggles to navigate the workplace, how AI is disrupting businesses and the realities of diversity and equity efforts, as well as how current events are affecting employees personally and professionally. Her reporting on EBN's podcast, Perk Up!, earned the team a regional silver award from the AZBEE Award of Excellence in 2025. She has also interviewed several winners of EBN's Excellence in Benefits Awards, including top CEOs and CHROs from Lyft and Walmart.
Bernadette Berdychowski is a reporter with Financial Planning. Follow her on Twitter at @bberny14.
“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.