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.
Christopher Condo serves Application Development & Delivery (AD&D) Professionals. He is part of Forrester's AD&D coverage of DevOps tool chains, focusing on continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) as well as software development strategies for enabling those strategies.
Previous Work Experience
Prior to his current role as an analyst, Chris was the engineering manager for the enterprise web applications team for Altran North America, where he oversaw and led the development of enterprise applications in the medical device and automated warehousing industry. Chris led a team of 10 software engineers, developed proposals, led estimation efforts, led resourcing efforts (including offshore), and also pitched in as an individual contributor. Chris has firsthand experience of developing software using agile practices and helping clients migrate to CI and CD methodologies as well as migrating to the cloud.
Prior to Altran, Chris was a senior development engineer at Microsoft for 13-plus years, working in the SaaS space starting with the Microsoft bCentral suite of online eCommerce tools targeted at small to medium businesses. Chris went on to lead software development efforts for the Office Live product suite, developing CRM and eCommerce platforms for Microsoft's growing online customer base. With Office 365, in addition to feature development, Chris worked on early tool chains that enabled global configuration and secure cloud deployments prior to their mainstream existence on the Azure platform. He also performed research and development on components to limit the impact of DOS attacks.
Before Microsoft, Chris held senior software engineering roles at FASTech, M/A-Com, and Digital Equipment Corp.
Education
Chris graduated from UMass Lowell with a B.S. in computer science. Chris is an active member of UMass Lowell Computer Science Industry Advisory Board.
Schechter is an associate attorney at Butterfield Schechter LLP in San Diego.
Mallon is Bersin’s chief storyteller. He engages directly with Bersin members and the market to bring the Bersin’s insights to life. As a 10-year veteran with the organization, and the leader of Bersin’s Research team for six years, he is one of Bersin’s most knowledgeable thought leaders in all areas of HR, talent, learning, and leadership. As a pivotal force behind Bersin’s maturity research for the past decade, he brings a unique, integrated perspective to helping organizations solve their most vexing workforce challenges – wisely and with systematic purpose. Before joining Bersin, Mallon led the consulting practice for a major LMS provider. Prior to that, he held learning and organization development-related positions with EarthLink, where he was responsible for overall learning strategy for its global call center organization. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from Emory University and an M.S. in Digital Media from the Georgia Institute of Technology with focuses on computer-aided distance learning and on storytelling in digital environments. This column first ran on the Bersin web site
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.