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.
Grant Heckenkemper, CPA, is director of advisory services at L&H CPAs & Advisors in Dallas, where he advises founder-led companies on mergers and acquisitions, strategic finance and contract CFO engagements. He began his career in the audit practice at KPMG and is a CPA registered in the State of Texas.
Arun John is serving as director of insurance consulting at Virtusa, Arun John brings over 20 years of experience in Property & Casualty insurance technology, underwriting, and claims transformation. He leads strategic consulting and solutioning initiatives that help global insurance carriers modernize core policy administration and automate complex processes using generative AI, machine learning, and AR/VR accelerators. His career spans key consulting and product roles at Tech Mahindra, Cognizant, and IFFCO-Tokio. He holds an
engineering degree from Periyar University and AWS credentials in Generative AI project
planning.
Nadia van de Walle is the head of banking inclusion at Wells Fargo.
“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.