House says aye to bigger aid checks
Trump wish goes to Gop-led Senate
WASHINGTON — The House voted 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 highly uncertain.
Democrats led passage, 275-134, their majority favoring additional assistance, but dozens of Republicans joined in approval.
Although Democrats favor bigger checks, Congress had settled on smaller $600 payments in a compromise over the big year-end relief bill Trump reluctantly signed into law.
Senators were set to return to session Tuesday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared, “Republicans have a choice: Vote for this legislation or vote to deny the American people the bigger paychecks they need.”
The showdown could end up as more symbol than substance. Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., has declined to say publicly how the Senate will handle the bill when Democrats there try to push it forward for a vote Tuesday.
After the robust House vote,
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer warned, “There is no good reason for Senate Republicans to stand in the way.”
“There’s strong support for these $2,000 emergency checks from every corner of the country,” Schumer said in a statement. “Leader Mcconnell ought to make sure Senate Republi
cans do not stand in the way of helping to meet the needs of American workers and families who are crying out for help.”
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, which Trump signed into law Sunday, one of the biggest bills of its kind providing relief for millions of Americans.
That package, $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies, will deliver long-sought 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.
Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said Congress had already approved ample funds during the COVID-19 crisis.
“Nothing in this bill helps anybody get back to work,” he said.
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 the 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 on and expands on an earlier effort from Washington. It offers billions of dollars for vaccine purchases and distribution, 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.
Meanwhile, the government funding portion of the bill keeps federal agencies nationwide running without dramatic changes until Sept. 30.
Democrats are promising more aid to come once President-elect Joe Biden takes office, but Republicans are signaling a wait-and-see approach.
Biden told reporters at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, that he supports the $2,000 checks.
In his statement about the signing, Trump repeated his frustrations with the COVID-19 relief bill for providing only $600 checks to most Americans and complained about what he considers unnecessary spending, particularly on foreign aid — much of it proposed in his own budget.
While the president insisted he would send Congress “a redlined version” with spending items he wants removed, those are merely suggestions to Congress. Democrats said they would resist such cuts.
For now, the administration can only begin work sending out the
$600 payments.
A day after the signing, Trump was back at the golf course in Florida, the state where he is expected to move after Biden is sworn in on Jan. 20.