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.
Ian Cohen as CEO & Founder of LOKKER, provider of data privacy and compliance solutions for the enterprise, Ian is dedicated to providing solutions that empower companies to take control of their privacy obligations.
Before founding LOKKER in 2021, Cohen formerly served as CEO for Credit.com, and CPO for Experian, where he focused on consumer-permissioned data.
Brian Portnoy is the co-founder of Shaping Wealth, a Chicago-based firm that educates and trains financial advisors, companies and investors on behavioral finance concepts. He has held senior investment and education roles in the hedge fund and mutual fund industries and earned a Ph.D. in International Political Economy at the University of Chicago. An expert on the psychology of money, he is the author of The Geometry of Wealth.
Chad Witcher is chief operations officer at Synergi Partners.
“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.