House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to pay most Americans $2,000 to help weather the coronavirus pandemic.
Republicans objected to the bill House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sought to pass by unanimous consent Thursday to replace the $600 payments in the latest pandemic relief legislation with the $2,000 payments.
Kathleen Biggins is the founder and president of C-Change Conversations, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting productive, non-partisan discussions about the science and effects of climate change. The organization, comprised of volunteers who span the political spectrum, sponsors the C-Change Conversations Primer, which invites business and community leaders to learn about climate change from a wide range of nationally-recognized scientists and business and military leaders. Kathleen also developed the C-Change Primer with input from Climate Central and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Team members have presented the Primer to over 20,000 people in 32 states, and it is widely hailed as an intelligent, dispassionate introduction to and illumination of climate change. The Primer has been endorsed by business, political and social leaders and enthusiastically received by many conservative audiences across the country. Learn more at www.c-changeconversations.org
Vik Sohoni is a senior partner at McKinsey & Company.
Ido Segev is a senior partner in McKinsey & Company's Boston office.
“House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly fought for bigger checks for the American people, which House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected — first, during our negotiations when they said that they would not go above $600 and now, with this act of callousness on the Floor,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.
Democrats will try again with a roll call vote on a new bill Dec. 28, when the House also plans a vote to override Trump’s veto on the National Defense Authorization Act. Since current government spending runs out that day — and funds for the rest of the fiscal year are included in the virus relief bill Trump criticized and hasn’t signed -- the House could also pass another stopgap measure to avert a partial government shutdown.
Republicans on Thursday tried to seek unanimous consent on a measure to examine taxpayer money spent on foreign aid, but Democrats blocked that move. In his complaint Tuesday about Congress’s combined virus aid and government spending bill, Trump criticized federal resources spent on international programs, even though that spending was allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process.