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

Alex Preece is the CEO & co-founder of Tillo.

As Lifesum's Workplace Well-being Director, Wesleigh is dedicated to expanding partnerships and scaling Lifesum's corporate wellbeing solution, Lifesum for Work.

Wesleigh brings extensive experience from the health and wellbeing industry. She has contributed to Amazon Alexa's Health and Wellness team, led customer success and channel sales for a workplace mental wellbeing solution, spent many years focused on fitness-industry advertising sales, and scaled Twitter's internal wellbeing program.

Passionate about increasing access to wellbeing practices for underserved younger generations, she serves as Board Chair for the Los Angeles chapter of Girls on the Run, a US-based nonprofit organization.

Mykhailo Iakovenko is the CEO and co-founder of Canonical Labs. He has extensive experience leading fraud prevention and mitigation strategies at leading financial technology companies. With a deep understanding of the evolving landscape of financial fraud, Mykhailo is dedicated to developing innovative solutions to protect the financial ecosystem.

“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.