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.
Graham Tasman is principal of advisory services at Grant Thornton Advisors LLC.
Vikrant Rai is the managing director of the risk advisory practice at Grant Thornton Advisors LLC.
As chief financial officer at Certinia, Erin Sawyer brings over 20 years of financial and operational experience with 10 years in the software industry. Most recently, she was the CFO of Wowza and deputy CFO at Vertafore. She specializes as an executive strategist focusing on financial and operational discipline through business partnership, value creation and operational excellence. She graduated from North Carolina State University with her MBA and Arizona State University with a degree in accountancy.
“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.