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.
Kellie Johnson is SVP for the Americas at payments modernization specialists RedCompass Labs. Kellie previously worked at Payments Canada, Citi, Finastra and National Bank of Canada and has over 20 years of experience in payments with a focus on business development, strategy and product management.
Anne Maltese is the Director of People Insights at Quantum Workplace. She is passionate about making work better every day by coaching organizations on how to design engaging employee experiences that drive business success. Before joining Quantum Workplace, Anne was a consultant at Gallup, working with organizations to solve their most pressing business problems. Anne has a master's degree in I/O Psychology from the University of Akron and nearly two decades of experience specializing in employee engagement, performance management, and workplace cultures.
Martin Taylor is the co-founder and deputy CEO of Content Guru, a global cloud communications and customer experience technology provider. Martin's responsibilities include product innovation and strategic market development.
“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.