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.
Melany B. Atkins, MD, is a diagnostic radiologist with the Fairfax (Va.) Radiological Consultants.
Jamie Overberg, a partner at TaxOps Minimization, has been executing and managing all aspects of R&D credits for over 20 years at companies. She links nexus to qualified expenses by business component or project accounting. She can be reached at joverberg@taxops.com.
Larry Sher is a partner in the New York office of October Three. He has been a pension actuary for over 35 years, specializing in cash balance and other innovative retirement plans. Larry is a highly sought after expert and advisor and, in August 2014, was appointed to the New Jersey Pension and Health Benefits Commission by Governor Chris Christie. Larry is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries (FSA), a Fellow of the Conference of Consulting Actuaries (FCA), a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA) and an Enrolled Actuary (EA). He has been a Board Member and Vice-Chair of the Actuarial Standards Board, the group that establishes actuarial standards of practice for all US actuaries. Larry has also been on the Boards of the American Academy of Actuaries and the Conference of Consulting Actuaries, and was recently President of the Conference.
“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.