GOP pitches Biden on smaller aid plans as Dems prepare to act alone
President Joe Biden and 10 Senate Republicans held a long meeting on the coronavirus relief bill. Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion package; the GOP group offered a narrower $618 billion plan. Lawmakers didn’t reach a deal but sounded hopeful, even as Democrats said they’d push ahead with or without GOP backing.
A coalition of 10 Republican senators took a stimulus counterproposal to the White House on Monday evening, urging President Joe Biden to scale back his ambitions for a sweeping $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package in favor of a plan less than one-third the size that they argued could garner the bipartisan consensus the new president has said he is seeking.
Their outline, which came as Democrats prepared to push forward on Biden’s plan with or without Republican backing, amounted to a test of whether the president would opt to pursue a scaled-back measure that could fulfill his pledge to foster broad compromise, or use his majority in Congress to reach for a more robust relief effort enacted over stiff Republican opposition.
Biden appeared eager to signal an openness to negotiating, telling Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the leader of the group, that he was “anxious” to hear what the senators had to say as they chatted in
very serious one and I would be hesitant to put myself in place of the people of Georgia who elected her,” Gimenez said in an interview with WLRN, arguing that many of her social media posts were known to the public while she ran for office. “I’m hesitant to say I know better than the voters of Georgia.”
Diaz-Balart said in a statement that Greene’s comments, which have been widely disseminated on video, are “unacceptable,” but that she shouldn’t be kicked out of Congress.
“The House of Representatives has never expelled any member, of either political party, for what they have said no matter how reprehensible the statement,” Diaz-Balart said in a statement. “The comments that I’ve read in the press attributed to Marjorie Taylor Greene are unacceptable, and if true, merit an apology to Parkland families.”
Gimenez and Diaz-Balart didn’t answer when asked by the Miami Herald if they support removing Greene from her committee posts, including an assignment on the House Education and Labor Committee, which has oversight over federal education policy.
Broward Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz introduced a resolution on Monday to potentially force a House vote on Greene’s committee assignments, which are the bulk of a lawmaker’s legislative work. Wasserman Schultz noted that it’s unlikely there is enough support to expel Greene, which requires a two-thirds vote, but said her resolution can remove Greene from committees with a simple majority vote.
“She stalked a kid who was a victim of gun violence,” Wasserman Schultz said. “We’re focused on making sure that we can render powerless the poisonous nature of a member who has only been in office since Jan. 3.”
After his WLRN interview, Gimenez wrote a post criticizing Greene.
“Comments made by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, including spreading conspiracy theories about the Parkland shooting, are disturbing,” Gimenez tweeted. “Leader [Kevin] McCarthy will be speaking to her this week and I look forward to hearing the outcome.”
And Republican Sen. Marco Rubio told a conservative blog that “Parkland was a real tragedy in which real parents lost real children. Anyone suggesting it was fake is either deranged or a sadist.”
As a senator, Rubio doesn’t have the power to expel Greene or boot her from committees.
Every Democrat from Miami-Dade and Broward County — Wasserman Schultz, Rep. Alcee Hastings, Rep. Frederica Wilson and Rep. Ted Deutch, who represents Parkland in Congress — has called for Greene’s expulsion.
California Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez introduced a resolution to remove Greene from office last week, and said Monday that at least 63 lawmakers, all Democrats, have signed on.
Expelling Greene for her behavior would be without precedent. Only five U.S. House members have ever been expelled, and it requires a two-thirds vote. Three were expelled in
1861 for supporting the
Confederacy, while one was expelled in 1980 after being convicted of bribery and another was expelled in 2002 after being convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion.
House Minority Leader McCarthy hasn’t said what he plans to do with Greene, though he is meeting with her this week. In 2019, he removed former Iowa Rep. Steve King from two committees after King, who had a history of racist remarks, said, “White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
Greene vowed retaliation if Democrats are successful in stripping her committee assignments, saying Republicans would return the favor if they win back a majority in the House of Representatives.
“If Democrats remove me from my committees, I can assure them that the precedent they are setting will be used extensively against members on their side,” Greene tweeted on Monday.
Greene hasn’t apologized for her past comments. In the last few days, she has used the controversy to raise money and said that she plans to meet soon with former President Donald Trump, who remains popular with many Republican voters and members of Congress.
“The entire Republican establishment refuses to stand up to her so now they own the lie,” said Parkland parent and gun control advocate Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was one of the 17 people killed in the 2018 mass shooting. “Not only has she lied about what happened to my daughter, she is currently fundraising off of the lie and the party is silent.”