USA TODAY International Edition
$ 600 or $ 2,000? Debate could sway Ga. races
Check amounts now top issue in Senate runoffs
Even though the proposal to increase coronavirus relief checks from $ 600 to $ 2,000 may fail in the Senate, moves by two Georgia Senate incumbents to back the idea could energize Republican supporters before Tuesday’s runoff election.
This week, Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue announced their support of an increase in the amount to be sent in checks to Americans, an idea pushed by both Democrats and President Donald Trump. Their Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, also support a boost in aid. They accused the GOP candidates of flip- flopping and hope the issue will draw Democratic supporters and left- leaning independents to the polls.
The debate has come to the forefront of Georgia’s runoff races, which will determine which party controls the Senate at the start of Presidentelect Joe Biden’s administration.
Alan Abramowitz, political science professor at Emory University and author of “The Great Alignment: Race,
Party Transformation and the Rise of Donald Trump,” said it’s not surprising all four candidates support the increased aid as it’s “very popular, pretty much across the board ... even with Republican voters.”
Trump initially balked at signing a $ 900 billion COVID- 19 relief package, demanding an increase in the size of the checks to $ 2,000 from $ 600. Though he backed down and signed the legislation late Sunday, his support for bigger checks put pressure on Republicans, especially the two Georgia incumbents.
“It’s only because Trump is in favor of it, obviously, that this is happening,” Abramowitz said of Perdue and Loeffler backing the increased aid. “If Trump had just signed the bill, without first attacking the $ 600 payment as woefully inadequate, there’s no way this would have happened.”
The House passed legislation Monday that would increase the checks to $ 2,000. The Senate has yet to take up the bill. Instead, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., introduced a bill Tuesday that would combine the proposal for bigger checks with two controversial proposals – a repeal of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that shields big tech companies from legal liabilities, and the creation of a commission to study Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
Combining the three provisions into one bill will probably kill the higher relief checks, given Democratic opposition to the repeal of Section 230 and the creation of the election commission. Trump’s claims have been dismissed by court after court, and the Justice Department found no evidence of widespread election fraud.
McConnell said Wednesday the $ 2,000 checks had “no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate.”
Georgia voters are already casting ballots. As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 2.5 million votes had been cast in the runoff election. Of those, 1.7 million were early votes, and more than 850,000 were absentee ballots.
For Georgia, a state inundated with Senate runoff campaign ads, the relief checks have become something of a campaign promise for Loeffler and Perdue. In a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Loeffler touted her 100% voting record with Trump, and she chided Democrats for “playing politics” and holding up relief.
“I’ve said, absolutely, we need to get relief to Americans now, and I will support that. But look, here’s the issue. Democrats have blocked relief time and again,” Loeffler said.
Perdue, also in a Fox interview, said the COVID- 19 bill “should’ve been done four months ago” and accused Democrats of having “played politics” with the issue.
“I’m delighted to support the president in this – it’s really a $ 1,400 increment over what we’ve already done,” Perdue said. “And I think with the vaccine coming, I think this is absolutely appropriate, so I fully support what the president is doing right now.
“It’s the right thing to do for the people in Georgia,” he said.
In July, Loeffler opposed an increase to unemployment insurance payments, and Perdue said he’d rather have a new payroll tax cut than direct payments.
During an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, Ossoff accused Perdue of flipping “his position at the very last minute, but he doesn’t mean any of this.”
“He’s just another dime- a- dozen politician who will say whatever he has to say when an election arrives to try to win reelection,” Ossoff said. “If he meant this, he’d be on the floor of the United States Senate demanding that Mitch McConnell put up the House bill, a clean $ 2,000 check authorization, for an up or down vote.”
Nse Ufot, CEO of the New Georgia Project, an organization that helps register voters, said the election is a “battle of the bases” and the relief check issue could spur turnout on both sides.
Ufot accused Loeffler and Purdue” of voting “against direct aid to Georgians all year” and said their support for higher checks is an anomaly.
“If this is the only set of circumstances under which they will vote with Georgia families, they can’t go to D. C.,” she said
Ufot noted that Trump’s base is strong and that the two Republican incumbents are motivating his supporters to go the polls by siding with him on coronavirus aid.