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.
William Glasgall is Director of Public Finance at The Volcker Alliance in New York. A four-decade veteran financial journalist, Bill brings to the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization a deep knowledge of state and local government finances and fiscal policies and leads the Truth in State Budgeting and Financial Reporting project that is building on recommendations made in 2013 by the State Budget Crisis Task Force headed by Volcker Alliance Chairman Paul Volcker and former New York Lieutenant Governor Richard Ravitch. Bill is also senior adviser to the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York.Bill came to the Alliance from Bloomberg News, where he directed U.S. local-government coverage as Managing Editor for States and Municipalities that received awards from the National Press Club Foundation and other organizations. He also served as co-host of Bloomberg’s Global Week Ahead Podcast, as well as Editor-at-Large and Enterprise Editor, and has been a featured speaker at conferences held by Bloomberg, the Bond Buyer, Governing Magazine, Investment Advisor, and TD Ameritrade. Before joining Bloomberg, Bill spent almost 20 years at BusinessWeek Magazine as Senior Writer and Senior Editor, winning two Overseas Press Club prizes for international reporting and heading the magazine’s personal finance and lifestyle sections. He was also a regular commentator and host on the PBS-TV show “This Week in Business,” Editorial Director of the Investment Advisor Group, vice-president at Standard & Poor’s Corp., and a reporter and editor at the Associated Press and the Star-Ledger in Newark, New Jersey.Bill is a Trustee of the Overseas Press Club Foundation and former member of the Board of Overseers of the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship Program in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University, where he was a Fellow. He is a graduate of Boston University and lives in New Jersey.
Ajay Vij is senior vice president and industry head of financial services for Infosys.
Paul Atkins is the founder and chief executive of Patomak Global Partners. He served as commissioner on the Securities and Exchange Commission from 2002 to 2008 and was a member of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program from 2009 to 2010. He was a partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers and its predecessor firm, Coopers & Lybrand, and began his career as a lawyer with Davis Polk & Wardwell.
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.