Virus relief aid
Democrats make push for larger pandemic-relief checks.
WASHINGTON — The House voted overwhelmingly Monday to increase COVID-19 relief checks to $2,000, meeting President Donald Trump’s demand for bigger payments and sending the bill to the GOP-controlled Senate, where the outcome is uncertain.
Democrats led passage, 275-134, their majority favoring additional assistance, but dozens of Republicans joined in approval. Congress had settled on smaller $600 payments in a compromise over the big year-end relief bill Trump reluctantly signed into law. Democrats favored higher payments, but Trump’s push put his GOP allies in a difficult spot.
The vote divided Republicans whomostly resist more spending.
But many House Republicans joined in support, preferring to link with Democrats rather than buck the outgoing president. Senators were set to return to session Tuesday, forced to consider the measure.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “Republicans have a choice: Vote for this legislation or vote to deny the American people” the assistance, she said, they need during the pandemic.
The showdown could end up as more symbol than substance.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., declined to say publicly how the Senate will handle the bill when Democrats there try to push it forward for a vote Tuesday.
The legislative action during the rare holiday week session may do little to change the $2 trillion-plus COVID-19 relief and federal spending package that Trump signed into law Sunday, one of the biggest bills of its kind providing relief for millions of Americans.
Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, acknowledged the division and said Congress had already approved ample funds during the COVID-19 crisis. “Nothing in this bill helps anybody get back to work,” he said.
The package the president signed into law includes two parts — $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies. It will deliver longsought cash to businesses and individuals and avert a federal government shutdown that otherwise would have started Tuesday, in the midst of the public health crisis.
Aside from the direct $600 checks to most Americans, the COVID-19 portion of the bill revives a weekly pandemic jobless benefit boost — this time $300, through March 14 — as well as a popular Paycheck Protection Program of grants to businesses to keep workers on payrolls. It extends eviction protections, adding a new rental assistance fund.
The COVID-19 package draws and expands on an earlier effort from Washington. It offers billions of dollars for vaccine purchases and distribution, for virus contact tracing, public health departments, schools, universities, farmers, food pantry programs and other institutions and groups facing hardship in the pandemic.
Americans earning up to $75,000 will qualify for the direct $600 payments, which are phased out at higher income levels, and there’s an additional $600 payment per dependent child.
Meantime the government funding portion of the bill keeps federal agencies nationwide running without dramatic changes until Sept. 30.
Together with votes Monday and Tuesday to override Trump’s veto of a sweeping defense bill, the attempt to send much higher pandemic-era checks to people is perhaps the last standoff of the president’s final days in office as he imposes fresh demands and disputes the results of the presidential election. The new Congress is set to be sworn in Sunday.
Trump’s sudden decision to sign the bill in Florida, where he is spending the holidays, came as he faced escalating criticism from lawmakers on all sides over his eleventh-hour demands. The bipartisan bill negotiated by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had already passed the House and Senate by wide margins.
Lawmakers had thought they had Trump’s blessing after months of negotiations with his administration.
Trump’s refusal to act, publicized with a heated video he tweeted before the Christmas holiday, sparked chaos, a lapse in unemployment benefits for millions and the threat of a federal. It was another crisis of his own making, resolved when he signed the bill into law.
President- elect Joe Biden said he supported the $2,000 checks.