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.
Oliver Tearle is head of research at The ai Corporation
Sumit Punjabi is senior manager of RPA strategy, digital strategy and business transformation at NTT DATA Services. He is a management consultant with extensive global consulting experience spanning the breadth of robotics process automation strategy and roadmap definition, digital strategy assessments, customer journey re-engineering, business transformation, business process management, program management, change management and implementation of various policy level changes impacting the organization.
He has advised senior executives of leading global institutions on several strategic engagements, assessing the organizations business strategies, people, process and technology capabilities, identifying key client business issues, determining client needs, validating analysis and developing recommendations for the client in the context of the overall business strategy. He has extensively used Lean Six-Sigma and ITIL methodologies to analyze, improve and redesign solutions across business and IT process areas.
Sumit is an MBA from Indian School of Business and participated in a student exchange program with Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University. He is also a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (ASQ), Dell Certified Project Management Professional and Trained in ITIL v3.
Andre Sterley is a senior audit manager and practice leader for the digital asset group of Mazars USA based in New York City, as well as co-chair for the accounting and audit working group of the Accounting Blockchain Coalition. The Mazars Digital Asset Group was formed with the mission to help organizations navigate the complex accounting, tax, audit and other advisory issues related to digital assets, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies.
“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.