Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blocked an attempt by Democrats to force quick action increasing direct stimulus payments to $2,000 as President Donald Trump warned that failing to act now amounted to a “death wish” by Republicans.
McConnell objected to a motion by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to approve by unanimous consent a stimulus-checks bill that passed the House on Monday. He also blocked a motion by Senator Bernie Sanders to vote on the stimulus checks immediately after the Senate votes on overriding Trump’s veto of a key defense policy bill.
Floor requests to immediately pass legislation are frequently criticized as stunts, but this episode highlights how unlikely it is that the Senate will pass a bill increasing the payments before Congress adjourns Sunday.
McConnell said the Senate will consider higher stimulus checks in conjunction with two other Trump complaints unrelated to the pandemic relief bill he signed into law: an investigation into alleged election fraud and reworking a law that shields technology companies from liability for user content.
“This week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus,” McConnell said, without explaining when or if a vote will happen.
But Trump wasn’t satisfied. In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Trump said the GOP should pass the bigger stimulus payments “ASAP.” He also said they should deal with his other demands on the election and tech companies.
Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP. $600 IS NOT ENOUGH! Also, get rid of Section 230 - Don’t let Big Tech steal our Country, and don’t let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election. Get tough! https://t.co/GMotstu7OI
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2020
Despite the push by Trump, spending $464 billion on higher stimulus checks has divided Republicans, some of whom are increasingly focused on the burgeoning national debt. Only 44 Republicans joined 231 Democrats on Monday to pass a bill increasing the payments to $2,000. In the Senate, just a handful of Republicans are now publicly on board, including Florida’s Marco Rubio and Missouri’s Josh Hawley.
Armed Service Chairman Jim Inhofe said he would likely vote against $2,000 checks because of deficit concerns.
“I’d have a hard time supporting that,” he said. “It’s such a huge number.”
Political impact
The GOP tension comes at a crucial time for Republicans who are fighting to maintain control of the Senate in a pair of Georgia runoff elections on Jan. 5. On Tuesday, both GOP incumbents in those races, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, also came out in favor of the $2,000 checks.
McConnell has several options to tackle the direct-payment conundrum Trump put him in. With the Schumer attempt blocked, McConnell could point out that there is no agreement to process the House bill on the floor by the time the current session of Congress ends on Jan. 3.
That approach could risk a backlash from Trump and his supporters, however. McConnell also could promise to work on the matter in the next Congress that starts next week.
Cagatay Zor is a fintech strategist and the head of the fintech and blockchain business line at Trumore.
Ciao-Wei Chen is an associate professor of accountancy at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Max Perkins is head of insurance solutions and COO for Spektrum Labs, an AI-first cyber resilience company that provides agents and tools to reduce the time, cost, and complexity of maintaining provable and effective security and insurability. Spektrum unifies the disconnected domains of cybersecurity, backup, and insurance into one continuous, automated system. By fusing these traditionally disconnected areas, Spektrum enables businesses to prove and maintain continuous resilience—from preventing cyber threats, to instant recovery, to securing financial coverage—all in one place. Spektrum unlocks resilience, automating and verifying the connection between security and insurance, so businesses can recover faster and protect their future.
Prior to joining Spektrum, Max's professional career had been focused on insurance and risk management with particular expertise in intangible boardroom risks such as cyber, privacy, and intellectual property, and the overall impact of technology on business. Max was head of Strategy & Innovation for AXIS Capital's Cyber & Technology underwriting division, where his responsibilities included risk capital management and leadership in launching the world's first securitized 144a Cyber Cat Bond. Prior to joining AXIS in April 2020, he was an insurance broker at Lockton Companies and an underwriter at AIG, CHUBB and Beazley – operating both in the US and London markets.
Kicking the can down the road leaves McConnell with another problem, with Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, saying he will delay any attempt to override Trump’s veto of a separate defense bill this week unless there is a vote on stimulus checks.
Another option would be for McConnell to present his own bill, combining higher stimulus checks with the two other issues that Trump wants addressed.
But combining those elements into a package would poison a stimulus-checks bill for many Democrats. It would likely fail if brought to a vote.
Sanders said he didn’t know what McConnell has in mind but the majority leader shouldn’t complicate a bill by adding Trump’s other demands.
“The House passed, to their credit, a simple straightforward bill,” Sanders said in a brief interview Tuesday. “Let’s not muddy the waters. Are you for $2,000 or not? Let’s not talk about so-called voter fraud or abortion or anything else.”
Sanders’s demand for a vote on higher stimulus payments led him to block a separate Senate effort on Wednesday to unanimously override Trump’s veto of this year’s defense policy bill. That veto override, which was approved by the House Monday, will go through the full Senate process to get a vote before Sunday.
Democratic opening
Democrats, for their part, are relishing the political turmoil for the GOP and hoping it will give them a chance to flip the Senate to help enact President-elect Joe Biden’s far-reaching agenda.
“The House and the President are in agreement: we must deliver $2,000 checks to American families struggling this Holiday Season,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a tweet, calling on the Senate to pass the higher payments.
Although Biden on Monday said he supports the $2,000 payments, it is unclear if he will prioritize them in his stimulus proposal to Congress after the Jan. 20 inauguration if Congress fails to pass them before then.
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Budget estimates that the bigger payments would raise disposable income in the first quarter to as much as 25 percent above pre-pandemic levels. The legislation would produce an additional 1.5 percent in GDP output, but not all of the growth would occur in 2021, according to Marc Goldwein, an economist who co-authored the CRFB projections.
But many Republicans had opposed stimulus payments larger than the $600 in the existing law, in part over concerns about the price tag. Bumping the payments to $2,000 would cost roughly $463.8 billion, according to estimates by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.