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.
Hawzien Gebremedhin has been the diversity, equity and inclusion leader at Plante Moran for two years. Her family immigrated to the United States from the Tigray region of Ethiopia when she was a one-year-old, and she and her sister recently co-founded a nonprofit called Tigray Action Committee that is committed to bringing awareness and action to the Tigray Genocide. She is a graduate of the University of Colorado and holds a Diversity & Inclusion Certificate from Cornell University.
Corey Wilmer is an undergraduate research assistant at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth, North Dakota State University.
Oudom Hean is an assistant professor of finance at North Dakota State University and a faculty scholar at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth.
“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.