Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday closed off chances that the Senate would pass anytime soon a House bill that would give most Americans $2,000 stimulus payments.
The Kentucky Republican said the House legislation, approved in a bipartisan vote Monday, “has no realistic path” to quick passage in the Senate and that it falls short of the demands of President Donald Trump. He again blocked an attempt by Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to adopt the House bill to increase the payments to $2,000 from the $600 by unanimous consent.
Kevin Petrie is a senior director at Attunity and author of Streaming Change Data Capture: A Foundation for Modern Data Analytics.
Norbert Monfort is vice president of IT transformation and innovation at Assurant, which specializes in risk management. He is also an adjunct professor at Florida International University, where he teaches IT-related subjects.
Tobi Carter is a Checkpoint Editor/Author with the Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting Business. In this position, she serves as in-house SEC expert. Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Ms. Carter was an associate in the Corporate and Securities Law Practice Group at Certilman Balin Adler & Hyman, LLP for nearly five years. Before practicing at Certilman Balin, Ms. Carter was an attorney for two years in the Securities Litigation Group at Greenberg Traurig, L.L.P. Prior to that, she was Associate Counsel for two years at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc. Ms. Carter earned her Juris Doctor from New York University School of Law in 2001, where she served as Senior Staff Editor of the Environmental Law Journal. In 1998, she graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a B.A., cum laude, in Legal Studies. Admitted to practice in the State of New York, Ms. Carter is a member of the American Bar Association, as well as its Business Law Section.
The Senate instead will work on combining the stimulus payments with measures on election integrity and rolling back social media liability protections, he said. That responds to all three issues Trump has said he wants, but a bill combining them likely will alienate enough senators in both parties to leave prospects for bigger stimulus payments dead in the Senate.
“The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of the Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help,” McConnell said. The House bill would raise the income cutoff to receive a payment.
The clash over the payments also is entangling another piece of year-end business in the Senate — a vote to override Trump’s veto of a crucial $740.5 billion defense policy bill. Senators Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey said they will continue to delay the defense legislation vote unless McConnell relents and allows a vote on a standalone bill on the bigger stimulus checks.
“We are saying to Mitch McConnell, to allow the United States Senate to do what it’s supposed to do, and that is the vote,” Sanders told reporters. “The House passed the bill, it’s over here right now. Do you want to vote against it? Then vote against it.”
Pennsylvania Republican Senator Pat Toomey later blocked an attempt by Sanders to call up the House bill for a roll call vote.