GOP blocks Democrats’ bid for $2K payments Trump demanded

House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempt to meet President Donald Trump’s demand to pay most Americans $2,000 to help weather the coronavirus pandemic.

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.

CORONAVIRUS IMPACT: ADDITIONAL COVERAGE
 Corinne Carr, Chief Compliance Officer, Route.

Corinne Carr is a seasoned insurance regulatory and transactional attorney with 30 years of experience, including 15 years as a partner in BigLaw. In private practice, she regularly represented clients whose primary industry is not insurance such as logistics, shipping, marketplace, ecommerce, insurtechs, retail and manufacturing clients. Carr designed and implemented shipping insurance, embedded insurance, product warranty, service contract, and other insurtech programs for companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500s. She is widely recognized as the "go to" resource for designing innovative, but compliant, structures to boost revenue during the purchase and post-purchase customer experience. Corinne joined Route as its chief compliance officer in June 2022.

Mona Shah, JD, MPH, is the senior director of policy and strategy at Community Catalyst, a national organization dedicated to building the power of people to create a health system rooted in race equity and health justice, and a society where health is a right for all.

Jeff Saye

Jeff Saye is Global Practice Leader of Insurance Claims at Genpact.

“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.

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A runner stands near the U.S. Capitol in Washington.
Oliver Contreras/Bloomberg

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.