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 Republicans on 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 shutdown, nor are we going to let the American people down,” 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 328,000 and rising.
Trump is ending his presidency much the way he started it — sowing confusion and reversing promises all while contesting the election 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-end scorching of their work.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., helped negotiate the year-end deal, a prized bipartisan compromise, that won sweeping approval this week 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 hurt ling 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 Pelosi, 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 $2,000 checks. 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 Dingell, D-Mich., decried the possibility that the COVIDassistance maycollapse.
“It is Christmas Eve, but it is not a silent night. 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, peopleterrified of whatisgoingto 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 onthe private call and granted anonymity to discuss it. Most had voted for the package and they urged GOPleaders to hit thecablenewsshowstoexplainits benefits, the person said.
Yet the president has found common ground with Democrats —particularlyleadingliberalswho 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.
TheclashThursdayunfoldedas theDemocratic-controlledHouse convened for a routine pro forma session,whichhadbeenscheduled before Trump’s sudden moves, when lawmakers anticipated no business being conducted.
Instead, the 12-minute House sessionmorphedintoaprocedural 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 wouldestablishatemporary$300 per week supplemental jobless benefit,alongwithanewroundof subsidies for hard-hit businesses, restaurants and theaters and money for schools.