GOP breaks with Trump on checks
Democrats’ move to OK $2,000 payments blocked in House
House Republicans on Thursday blocked an effort by House Democrats to approve $2,000 stimulus payments for millions of Americans. Democrats were seeking to advance the measure after President Donald Trump demanded it on Tuesday night, breaking with many in the Republican Party.
House Democratic leadership attempted to advance the measure by “unanimous consent,” but the effort was blocked by Republican leadership.
Trump has hinted he will not sign a $900 billion emergency economic relief package into law unless these larger stimulus payments are approved. Many Democrats also support the higher payments, while most Republicans do not.
But Trump’s late-stage intervention now puts the entire package in jeopardy, and the government will shut down on Tuesday if there is not a resolution.
House Democrats also blocked a measure sought by Republicans to re-evaluate U.S.
spending on foreign aid, something Trump also pushed for earlier this week.
“Today, on Christmas Eve morning, House Republicans cruelly deprived the American people of the $2,000 that the President agreed to support,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D -Calif., said in a statement. “If the President is serious about the $2,000 direct payments, he must call on House Republicans to end their obstruction.”
The $900 billion stimulus package approved by Congress included $600 direct payment checks, a level that Trump’s top economic adviser, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, had proposed earlier this month. Trump on Tuesday said these checks were not big enough.
In an effort to counter Pelosi’s move, House Republicans attempted to pass a request to revisit the foreign aid portion of the government funding package, also through unanimous consent. This is also in line with demands that Trump surfaced for the first time Tuesday night, one day after the large spending package was approved by Congress.
It is unclear what lawmakers — or Trump — will do next after the failed procedural moves, and there are major consequences for both the economy and the government.
Failure to pass the package would also spell disaster for tens of millions of Americans and risk the broader U.S. economy at a perilous moment during the coronavirus pandemic. There is little time to act. Unemployment benefits for 14 million Americans expire on Saturday. An eviction moratorium protecting as many as 30 million Americans from eviction is set to expire by the end of the month. The federal government will shutdown Monday at midnight if lawmakers do not approve an extension in funding.
Because the House and Senate have already passed the bill, Trump could ultimately decide to veto it if his demands aren’t met.
If Trump does veto the legislation, Congress would then have the opportunity to override the president’s veto with another vote. Yet it’s likely that the relief effort could fall apart entirely at that point, given that congressional Republicans have already indicated that they are reluctant to go against Trump, who remains widely popular with GOP voters.
Despite the looming deadlines, the president as of Wednesday evening was still weighing whether he should veto the relief package, according to multiple officials inside and outside the White House granted anonymity to frankly discuss internal thinking.
Trump was encouraged by what he perceived as the positive reaction in the media to his criticism of the aid package, as well as support among Democrats from his call for $2,000 stimulus payments, one person in communication with senior White House officials said. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe candid interactions with the White House.
“Nobody knows exactly what Trump is going to do, and they’re all trying to figure it out,” the adviser said, describing the odds of a veto as “a little less than 50-50.”
The $900 billion aid package Trump may veto would also devote $25 billion for food assistance amid an explosion of hunger in America; hundreds of billions for restaurants and other small businesses bracing for the surge in the pandemic; and billions for other critical needs such as transportation agencies, vaccine distribution and rental assistance.
But Washington was suddenly consumed with a new political battle over the stimulus payments. House Minority Leader Kevin Mccarthy, R-calif., accused Democrats of “selective hearing ” Wednesday night because their effort does not include Trump’s call to cut international aid spending that the president also denounced in his video address.
“They have conveniently ignored the concerns expressed by the president, and shared by our constituents, that we ought to reexamine how our tax dollars are spent overseas,” Mccarthy said in a letter to House Republicans.
Trump’s own budget proposal included much of the foreign aid items that he himself railed against in his video address. The U.S. Global Leadership Coalition also pointed out in a statement that the aid funding had support from Republicans, including allies of Trump such as Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C.
“The truth is that not only were many of these funds pushed for by the White House — as recently as less than a week ago in the case of Sudan — but they were vetted and assembled by bipartisan leaders,” the coalition president, Liz Schrayer, said in a statement.
House Democrats plan to try to vote on legislation increasing the $600 per person check approved in the aid package to $2,000 on Monday if the effort on Thursday fails.