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.
Rani Hoitash is the John E. Rhodes Professor of Accountancy at Bentley University. He received his Ph.D. in accounting and information systems from Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Science in Economics at the College of Management in Tel-Aviv Israel. His research concentrates on corporate governance, internal controls and auditing. His work is published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting & Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory, Sloan Management Review, and several other journals. Professor Hoitash’s teaching interests include financial accounting, accounting information systems, and auditing. Hoitash recently served as an editor of Auditing: A Journal of Practice and Theory and on the editorial boards of Contemporary Accounting Research and the Journal of Business Research. He is a member of the Information Systems Audit and Controls Association and the American Accounting Association and is a Certified Information System Auditor (CISA).
Landi Morris is a Ph.D. student at Bentley University. Her research interests include audit quality, fees and resources. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Landi served as a tax manager in the Boston office of Grant Thornton LLP. She is a CPA licensed in the state of Massachusetts.
Kelly White is chief executive officer at RiskRecon.
“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.