A surprise scuffle over pandemic relief is set to run up against a crucial federal funding deadline next week as Democrats side with President Donald Trump in his demand for $2,000 payments to most Americans and Republicans take up his criticism of government spending.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning a full floor vote Monday on pandemic aid that includes the $2,000 payments that Trump says he wants, replacing the $600 in the original legislation. Republicans blocked Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s attempt to make that switch on Thursday.
“House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly fought for bigger checks for the American people, which House and Senate Republicans have repeatedly rejected—first, during our negotiations when they said that they would not go above $600 and now, with this act of callousness on the Floor,” Pelosi said in a statement Thursday.
The standoff over stimulus payments comes after months of intense negotiations finally yielded a compromise to inject $900 billion into the U.S. economy—including forgivable loans for small businesses, supplemental unemployment benefits, support for renters facing eviction, and funds for vaccine distribution. Those measures were combined with $1.4 trillion in annual government spending, and now the entire package is in limbo.
Trump hasn’t explicitly said he would veto the legislation, which Congress finished processing Thursday after it passed both chambers on Monday. The White House didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment. The bill has been flown to Florida, where Trump is spending Christmas at his private Mar-a-Lago club, according to a person familiar with the matter.
If the president doesn’t sign the bill by Monday night, the government—now operating under temporary funding—would begin a partial shutdown starting on Tuesday. The House may attempt to pass another stopgap funding measure on Monday if Trump hasn’t acted.
The president tweeted a video Tuesday criticizing the $2.3 trillion bill. His call for $2,000 payments, which most Republicans rejected as too costly, surprised GOP lawmakers.
“Republicans in Congress and the White House can’t agree on what they want,” Hoyer told reporters Thursday at the Capitol. “Surely, the president of the United States, whether he is in Mar-a-Lago or someplace else, ought to empathize with the suffering and apprehension and deep angst people are feeling this Christmas Eve.”
Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the GOP leadership, said there were not enough Republican votes in the Senate to pass the $2,000 payments.
“I hope the president looks at this again and reaches that conclusion that the best thing to do is to sign the bill,” Blunt told reporters.
The House will reconvene Monday to vote on the Cash Act, a bill introduced by Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal to increase stimulus checks to $2,000. Democrats will have a video conference call before the vote to discuss Congress’s pandemic response, according to a person briefed on the plan.
Republicans on Thursday tried to seek unanimous consent on a measure to examine taxpayer money spent on foreign aid, but Democrats blocked that move. In his complaint Tuesday about Congress’s combined virus aid and government spending bill, Trump criticized federal resources spent on international programs, even though such spending was included in his budget and was allocated as part of the bipartisan appropriations process.
Trump’s conflict with Congress further escalated this week with his veto Wednesday of the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed both chambers by large bipartisan margins earlier this month. The House plans to vote to override Trump’s veto Monday, with the Senate following suit on Tuesday. It would be the first time Congress overrules Trump.
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