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.
Jonathan is the CEO of Diyotta, a technology company that provides software for orchestrating and automating the movement and integration of Big Data on Hadoop, MPP and NoSQL platforms. He has over thirty years of experience with Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing, Data Integration and Information Management solutions. He has held various executive leadership positions with several leading Business Intelligence companies beginning with BASE Consulting Group (BASE), which he co-founded in 1994. In 2003, BASE merged with Knightsbridge Solutions and Jonathan became a member of the executive management team and board member. In 2006, Knightsbridge Solutions was acquired by Hewlett-Packard to become their Information Management Practice. Jonathan has been a columnist for Information Management magazine, a faculty member of The Data Warehousing Institute and a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley Extension and Santa Clara University. He can be reached at jwu@diyotta.com.
Alyssa Titche is an associate with Foley & Lardner LLP. She is a member of the Business Litigation & Dispute Resolution Practice.
Aizawa is a special counsel and business lawyer at Foley & Lardner LLP where she focuses her practice on employee benefits, including health and welfare plans, pension plans and executive deferred compensation 457 plans for tax exempt and governmental employers.
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.