House GOP says no to $2K checks
Virus relief remains stuck in limbo with shutdown looming
WASHINGTON— President Donald Trump’ s sudden demand for $2,000 checks for most Americans was swiftly rejected by House Republican son Thursday as his haphazard actions throw a massive coronavirus relief and government funding bill into chaos.
The rare Christmas Eve session of the House lasted minutes, with help for millions of Americans awaiting Trump’ s signature on the bill. Unemployment benefits, eviction protections and other emergency aid, including smaller $600 checks, are at risk. Trump’s refusal of the $900 billion package, which is linked to $1.4 trillion government funds bill, could spark a federal shutdown at midnight Monday.
“We’re not going to let the government shut down, nor are we going to let the American peopled own ,” said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the majority leader.
The optics appear terrible for Republicans, and the outgoing president, as the nation suffers through the worst holiday season many can remember. Families are isolated under COVID-19 precautions and millions of American households are devastated without adequate income, food or shelter. The virus death toll is more than 328,000and rising.
Trump is ending his presidency much the way he started it — sowing confusion and reversing promises all while con testing thee lec-tion and courting a federal shutdown over demands his own party in Congress will not meet.
The congressional Republican leaders have been left almost speechless by Trump’s year-ends corching of theirwork.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R- Calif., helped negotiate the yearend deal, a prized bipartisan compromise, that won sweeping approval thisweek in the House and Senate after the White House assured GOP leaders that Trump supported it.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin boasted that the $600 checks all sides had agreed to for Americans would be in the mail in a week.
Instead, Washington is hurtling toward a crisis with COVID aid about to collapse as the president is at his Mar-a-Lago club. He has been lashing out at GOP leaders for refusing to join his efforts to overturn the election that Joe Biden won.
“The best way out of this is for the president to sign the bill,” Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said Thursday. “And I still hope that’ s what he decides .”
Racing to salvage the year-end legislation, House Speaker Nancy P el osi,D- Calif., and Mnuchin are in talks on options.
Democrats will recall House lawmakers to Washington for a vote Monday on Trump’s proposal, with a roll call that would put all members on record as supporting or rejecting the $2,000checks. They are also considering a Monday vote on a stop-gap measure to at least avert a federal shutdown. It would keep the government running until Biden is inaugurated Jan. 20. Lawmakers will also be asked to override Trump’s veto of a must-pass Defense bill.
After presiding over the short House session, an exasperated Rep. Debbie Din ge ll, D-Mich ., de cried the possibility that the COVID assistance may collapse.
“It is Christmas Eve, but it is not a silentnight. All is not calm. For too many, nothing is bright,” she said on Capitol Hill.
A town hall she hosted the night before “had people crying, people terrified of what is going to happen,” she said.
The president’s push to increase direct payments for most Americans from $600 to $2,000 for individuals and $4,000 for couples drives support from Democrats but splits the GOP with a politically difficult test of their loyalty to the president.
Republican lawmakers traditionally balk at the big spending, never fully embracing Trump’s populist approach. Many have opposed $2,000 checks as too costly and poorly targeted.
On a Wednesday conference call, House Republican lawmakers complained that Trump threw them under the bus, according to one Republican on the private call and granted anonymity to discuss it. Most had voted for the package and they urged GO Pleaders to hit the cable news shows to explain its benefits, the person said.
Yet the president has found common ground with Democrats — particularly leading liberals who support the $2,000 payments as the best way to help struggling Americans. Democrats only settled for the lower number to compromise with Republicans.
Even if the House is able to approve Trump’s $2,000 checks Monday, that measure would likely die in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is due back in session Tuesday.
The clash Thursday unfolded as the Democratic- controlled House convened for a routine pro forma session, which had been scheduled before Trump’s sudden moves, when lawmakers anticipated no business being conducted.
Instead, the 12-minute House session morphed into a procedural brawl as Hoyer, the No. 2 House Democrat, sought the unanimous approval of all House members to pass the bill with Trump’s proposal. GOP leader McCarthy, who was not present in the nearly-empty chamber, refused.
House Republicans then tried, and failed, to win unanimous approval of their own proposal to revisit routine foreign aid funding, which Trump had cited as one of his key objections to the overall spending package.
The year- end package Trump railed against as a “disgrace” is the product of months of work. It would establish a temporary $300 per week supplemental job less benefit, along with a new round of subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters and money for schools.