option number 1. get off the power trip and open the economy...option #2 2000 no pork anywhere zero, this is supposed to be a covid bill to help people big gov shafted
The $900 billion stimulus package COVID-19 "relief" bill is exactly what one would expect from a dysfunctional, tone-deaf Congress: a pork-filled cluster filled with anything and everything that has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic or relief.
And in the swampiest thing ever, the bill, which is combined with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill, is 5,593 pages long, or 5,583 pages too many, was given to lawmakers six hours before a vote to review what exactly is in it (hint: more pork than a Tyson Foods plant).
The top-line from the bill says a mere $600 per adult and $600 per child goes to those eligible, which is half of what adults received in another relief package passed earlier this year (the per-child payment was $500). Not hard to see that this amount is hardly enough to keep those struggling from staying out of poverty.
So where is the rest of the $1.4 trillion going?
Glad you asked.
Exhibit A: "Of the funds appropriated under title III of the Act that are made available for assistance for Pakistan, not less than $15,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs and not less than $10,000,000 shall be made available for gender programs." Yep. $10 million. For gender programs. In Pakistan.
Exhibit B: Funds for "Resource Study of Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot." That riot occurred in (checks notes) 1908.
Exhibit C: "Statement Of Policy Regarding The Succession Or Reincarnation Of The Dalai Lama." We'll just leave that one there.
Exhibit D: There's actually a commission tasked with educating “consumers about the dangers associated with using or storing portable fuel containers for flammable liquids near an open flame."
Exhibit E: Another $40 million will be allocated "for the necessary expenses for the operation, maintenance and security" of The Kennedy Center, which received $25 million in another COVID-19 relief bill earlier this year. Also in a related story, the Kennedy Center has been closed.
Exhibits F, G, H, I, J: $86 million for assistance to Cambodia; $130 million to Nepal, $135 million to Burma, $453 million to Ukraine, $700 million to Sudan.
Exhibit K: The bill creates a Women's History Museum and an American Latino Museum as part of the Smithsonian. Overall, the Smithsonian gets (checks notes again) $1 billion.
You get the idea. It's the oldest trick in Washington: Take a bill that symbolically is overwhelmingly supported by the American people on its title alone (COVID-19 relief for those struggling due to the pandemic). Then attach every pet project possible, in this case by combining it with an omnibus spending bill, and away we go.
Then there's the gall of Pelosi, who politicized this process in stalling negotiations since the summer with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin until after the election to ensure her party’s presidential nominee got past the finish line.
“That is a total game-changer — a new president and a vaccine,” she said. “We have a new president — a president who recognizes that we need to depend on science to stop the virus.”
The kind of science that creates (checks notes once again) multiple vaccines in record time as was done under President Trump's Operation Warp Speed?
"Congressional Democrats have reached an agreement with Republicans and the White House on an emergency coronavirus relief and omnibus package that delivers urgently needed funds to save the lives and livelihoods of the American people," Pelosi wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Again, using words like "emergency" and "urgently needed funds" that have been an emergency for many and urgently needed for months are the highest levels of insult.
Party power is always the goal with Pelosi. It may explain why her approval rating currently sits at 33 percent while Congress’s sits at 21 percent.
Another year, another spending bill stuffed with pork.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
President Donald Trump appeared no closer to signing an end-of-year COVID relief and spending bill Sunday as unemployment aid expired, the government barrels toward a mid-pandemic shutdown, and lawmakers implored him to break the impasse he created after Congress approved the deal.
The fate of the bipartisan package remained in limbo after Trump blindsided members of both parties with a demand for larger COVID relief checks and complained about “pork” spending, even as help for millions of Americans struggling to make ends meet lapsed overnight. The federal government will run out of money at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday if Trump refuses to sign the bill as he spends the holidays in Florida.
In the face of economic hardship and spreading disease, several lawmakers urged Trump to sign the legislation immediately, then have Congress follow up with more relief.
“What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel,” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont said Sunday. “So many people are hurting.”
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania also said Trump should sign the bill, then make the case for more. “We’ve got a bill right now that his administration helped negotiate,” he said. “I think we ought to get that done."
That point was echoed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who's criticized Trump's pandemic response and his efforts to undo the election results. “I just gave up guessing what he might do next,” he said. Hogan and Sanders spoke on ABC's This Week, Toomey on Fox News Sunday.
In South Bend, Ind., Lanetris Haines, a self-employed single mother of three, stood to lose her $129 weekly jobless benefit unless Trump signed the package into law or succeeded in his improbable quest for changes.
“It’s a chess game and we are pawns,” she said.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
US Government Shutdown Looming Without Trump's Signature on Spending Bill
The clock is ticking toward a potential shutdown of U.S. federal agencies as an omnibus spending bill aimed at funding the government remains unsigned. Without President Donald Trump’s signature or passage of a stopgap measure to fund operations, a partial shutdown begins shortly after midnight Monday.
The president also failed to sign a critical pandemic relief and government funding package before midnight Saturday, meaning increased unemployment benefits and eviction protections expired at 12:01 a.m. Sunday.
Trump had sharply criticized the legislation earlier this week and on Saturday indicated his continued objections to it.
Trump tweeted, “I simply want to get our great people $2000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill. Also, stop the billions of dollars in ‘pork.’”
Trump’s support for the larger checks has been seen as a rebuke to members of his Republican party, which had resisted Democratic efforts to negotiate larger payments.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania told the “Fox News Sunday” show, “I understand he wants to be remembered for advocating for big checks, but the danger is he’ll be remembered for chaos and misery and erratic behavior if he allows this (coronavirus relief bill) to expire.”
A long-time Trump critic, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told ABC’s “This Week” show, “What the president is doing right now is unbelievably cruel. Many millions of people are losing their extended unemployment benefits. They're going to be evicted from their apartments. There's money in that bill.”
A woman holds goods as Forgotten Harvest food bank distributes goods ahead of Christmas, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in Warren, Michigan, Dec. 21, 2020.
Fourteen million Americans will lose unemployment benefits, according to Labor Department data.
Democratic President-elect Joe Biden called on Trump to sign the bill.
"This abdication of responsibility has devastating consequences. … This bill is critical. It needs to be signed into law now," Biden, who is spending the year-end holidays in his home state of Delaware, said in a statement.
FILE - President-elect Joe Biden speaks at The Queen Theater in Wilmington, Del., Dec 22, 2020.
The president is spending time at his Florida resort along the Atlantic Ocean as Democrats and Republicans wait to see whether he will sign the $2.3 trillion spending legislation, which includes $900 billion for coronavirus relief and the remainder for government spending through next September. The bill has been flown from Washington to his Mar-a-Lago club to be available if he decides to sign it into law.
Trump has not specifically threatened to veto the bill. But he surprised lawmakers in both parties by calling it a “disgrace” after it had been passed in the House and Senate, capping months of negotiations in which Trump was little involved.
Congress is planning to return to work Monday, interrupting its usual Christmas recess, and could take up a stopgap measure to extend government funding for a few days or weeks while the impasse is resolved.
House members are also scheduled to vote Monday to override Trump's veto of a $740 billion bill authorizing the country's defense programs. If the House vote passes, the Senate could vote on the measure as early as Tuesday. It requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers to override a presidential veto.
Trump has criticized the defense bill on several fronts, arguing without explanation that the bill benefits China, and has demanded the removal of language that allows for the renaming of military bases that honor Confederate leaders who seceded from the United States in the 1860s. He has also demanded the addition of a provision making it easier to sue social media companies over content posted by their users.
FILE - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, left, meet with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 12, 2020.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s veto “an act of staggering recklessness that harms our troops.”
Pelosi, however, has embraced Trump’s call for $2,000 direct payments to all but top-earning American workers, and on Thursday used a legislative maneuver to force Republicans to defy Trump by blocking the increase.
Pelosi has announced plans to force another vote on the issue Monday. It is liable to be passed in the House, where Democrats have a majority, but unlikely to progress in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The White House declined to share details of the president's schedule during his Christmas holiday. It only said, "During the holiday season, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American people. His schedule includes many meetings and calls."
Nevertheless, Trump has been photographed playing golf at his Florida course near Mar-a-Lago. Reports say he was joined on the course Christmas Day by his close ally, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Trump also spent Sunday on his West Palm Beach golf course.
metmike:
We can guess that 95%+ of Americans, after finding out what was in this bill(that we didn't know before the election or until Congress passed it a week ago) think it's a horrible bill that makes no sense for the American people, including a paltry $600 check that will do almost nothing for us.......... and most are outraged but somehow, someway, the position/narrative is that President Trump should sign it ASAP.
The rationale is that it's too late for him to object to anything in it. He lost his chance............and the election is over so Americans voice doesn't matter.........Congress and the swamp can do what they they want and its just tough if we don't like this bill. If we want to have unemployment benefits renewed and to get our $600, we to take this monstrosity of a pile of crap, that we are paying every penny for.
They have framed it as President Trump holding us hostage by not signing the bill because he's not playing the game by the rules that Congress made...............entirely o benefit Congress.
But what is he holding out for?
$2,000 instead of $600 for every American in the bill.
How about Congress, for once getting off their high horses and doing the right thing for Americans. And the MSM for once, demanding that the people accountable for this pathetic bill be held accountable.
It's Trump's fault because.............Congress wrote one of the most pathetic bills in history and he didn't do something earlier?
How about, everything in the bill was written by Congress, not Trump. 100% of the blame should go to the authors of the bill, not the person who didn't write the bill.
Then, the person that didn't write the pathetic bill is now the scapegoat for it.
The only reason that it's supposedly too late to change anything in the bill is that Congress is refusing to do the right thing and change it.
Even if Trump was doing this entirely to mess over Congress.............good for him. These people work for the American people and all deserved to be fired..............oh, wait the next election is not for 2 more years..
I think that we should be told what member of Congress proposed each insane pork spending fiasco so there is accountability!
We might also be able to track the lobby money that went into their pockets because of it!
President Trump on Sundaysigned a $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government funding bill that includes $600 stimulus checks for most Americans.
The nearly 5,600-page bill passed the House and Senate by overwhelming margins on Monday night, just hours after its text was released.
The bill authorizes direct checks of $600 for people earning up to $75,000 per year. The amount decreases for higher earners and people who make over $95,000 get nothing.
There’s an additional $600 per child stimulus payment.
The bill creates a new $300 weekly unemployment supplement and replenishes a forgivable loan program for small businesses. It also creates new criminal penalties including prison time for violating copyright laws with online streaming.
Because the bill mashed together COVID-19 relief with ordinary government spending legislation, some social media users urged Trump to veto the bill, pointing to its billions in foreign aid and legislator pet projects.
metmike: President Trump has embarrassed himself in the way that he acted after the election but at least he was able to reveal the Swamp, he's leaving behind, one last time.
And the Swamp wins again............as Americans lose.
President Trump has signed the government funding and coronavirus relief package, the White House said, averting a government shutdown and delivering economic aid as the pandemic worsens.
Trump signed off on the $2.3 trillion package from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, days after he had expressed displeasure with the spending outlined in the omnibus and complained that the coronavirus relief measure should include direct payments of $2,000 per person, up from $600.
But the delay came after unemployment benefits expired for millions of Americans on Saturday as the bill went unsigned. Trump has visited his golf club in Florida each day since arriving in Florida on Wednesday and has made no public appearances.
The coronavirus relief bill passed after months of inaction from Congress and as the pandemic surges across the United States. The country has seen record levels of infections in recent weeks, though millions have continued to travel for the holiday.
The relief legislation includes direct payments of $600 per adult and per child. The amount per adult is half the $1,200 payments that were provided under the CARES Act enacted in March, but the amount per child is slightly larger than the $500 allowed under that law.
Two expiring CARES Act programs, Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, which made benefits available to the self-employed and gig economy workers, and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, which provided additional weeks of benefits, were extended for 11 weeks, averting a fiscal crisis for millions of Americans.
The bill also includes $284 billion in funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which provided distressed small businesses with forgivable loans to keep them afloat and leave employees on the books.
The omnibus had drawn Trump's ire for the inclusion of millions in funding for foreign policy priorities, including many outlined by the president's own administration. But had Trump not signed the bill, the government would have shutdown at midnight on Monday.
The House will vote on increasing the direct payments in the year-end coronavirus relief bill to $2,000.
President Donald Trump signed the legislation into law Sunday, after days of saying he opposed the measure because it includes only $600 stimulus checks.
The GOP-held Senate is unlikely to pass the larger direct payments even if the House does so.
WASHINGTON — The House of Representatives is set to vote Monday evening on whether to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the annual defense policy bill, setting up what could be a dramatic rebuke by Republicans of their party’s leader.
The $740 billion authorization measure passed both chambers of Congress earlier this month by large enough margins to override the veto. But several members of Congress have signaled in recent days that the override vote, which requires two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate, could be close if some Republicans switch their votes to be in line with Trump.
“I don't want to say I'm confident because we are in such a time that I just have no idea right now,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., in an interview on CNN Sunday. “But, you know, we passed with a significant amount of votes. There is some flex to lose some people that voted for it that don't vote to override the veto. That would be a tough one for me to explain, I just don't know how you do it. Hopefully, we can still get it overridden.”
If the vote succeeds in both chambers, it would be the first time Congress has overridden a veto by Trump.
‘Smart Toilets,’ Afghan Book Clubs, and Lizard Treadmills: Rand Paul’s Report Exposes $55 Billion in Government Waste
Sen. Rand Paul’s new report shows the feds wasted millions studying whether people will eat bugs, funding art classes in Kenya, fighting truancy in the Philippines, and more.
Everybody celebrates the holiday season in their own way. Each year, Senator Rand Paul invokes the spirit of the fictional grievance-airing holiday “Festivus” from Seinfeld to release an annual taxpayer waste report—and boy, is this one a doozy.
The libertarian-leaning Kentucky lawmaker’s report for 2020 finds an astounding $54.7 billion wasted by the federal government this year. (That’s not even an exhaustive figure for the federal government, nor does it account for the vast levels of waste by state and local governments.)
To put the nearly $55 billion wasted in context, Paul’s office explains that this is equivalent to wasting the taxes of more than 5.4 million Americans. It’s enough money to build a two-lane road that wraps around the entire Earth—18 times over. It’s enough money to buy every American a 40-inch flat-screen TV.
Yes, seriously.
Paul’s report cites far too many examples to list in one article, but even a cursory glance at some of its most prominent revelations will leave any honest taxpayer infuriated.
According to the senator’s report, the National Institutes of Health spent millions studying if people will eat bugs and millions more trying to invent a “smart toilet.” The federal agency also spent millions trying to reduce hookah smoking rates among Eastern Mediterranean youth and $31.5 million to fund an allegedly faked study linking e-cigarettes to heart attacks. According to the senator’s report, the National Institutes of Health spent millions studying if people will eat bugs and millions more trying to invent a 'smart toilet.'
Yet perhaps the most bizarre examples of how politicians spend our taxpayer money come from how the government uses it overseas.
We spent $8.6 billion on anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan, the report finds. Hundreds of thousands went to art classes for Kenyans, Afghan and Pakistani book clubs, and funding for Sri Lankan think tanks. In a truly baffling example, tens of millions were spent to combat truancy… in the Philippines.
Oh, and of course, we spent taxpayer money to put lizards on treadmills and study the results.
The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed a bill Monday evening to increase direct coronavirus relief payments to some people to $2,000, although the measure faces an uphill battle in the Republican-run Senate despite support from President Donald Trump.
The legislation would increase the $600 in direct payments to those who earned less than $75,000 last year to $2,000. Because the bill was brought up using an expedited procedure, it required a two-thirds majority to pass. It passed 275 to 134, just two votes more than the 273 needed.
Trump insisted on increasing the payments after his administration struck a deal for the $600 checks as part of a coronavirus relief and government spending package, which passed both chambers of Congress last week and which his administration helped to negotiate.
"I simply want to get our great people $2,000, rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill," Trump tweeted over the weekend from his Florida resort.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., applauded the vote Monday, saying: "The House and the president are in agreement: We must deliver $2,000 checks to American families struggling this Holiday Season. The House just passed the #CASHAct — it’s time for the Senate to do the same."
Trump cited the scheduled House vote in a statement Sunday announcing that he had finally signed the $2.3 trillion Covid-19 relief and government funding package.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he would try to pass the bill Tuesday by unanimous consent — a procedure that would allow it to advance only if there are no objections.
"Every Senate Democrat is for it, but unfortunately, we don't have the Republicans on board," Schumer told reporters ahead of Monday's vote before urging Trump to change the dynamic.
"These Senate Republicans have followed you through thick and thin. Get them now to act and to support the $2,000 checks," Schumer said.
The $600 payments are still expected to be made as early as the end of this week despite Trump's delay, a senior Treasury Department official said. Checks might clear the following Monday, because of the federal and bank holiday on Friday.
If the Senate also greenlights the $2,000 stimulus checks, Americans who have already received the original $600 will get a second payment of $1,400 to bring them to $2,000.
Washington (CNN)All eyes are on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday.
After the House overwhelmingly voted to both overridePresident Donald Trump's veto on the National Defense Authorization Act and to pass $2,000 stimulus checks, it's Senate Republicans' turn to navigate whether they're willing to cross Trump in his final days in office.
McConnell's plans for the week were not immediately clear earlier Tuesday. The Kentucky Republican blocked an effort to quickly pass a measureto increase direct stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000, though the legislation could be voted on at a later time or date if McConnell so chooses.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, attempted to pass the change to the omnibus spending bill through a unanimous consent request on the Senate floor, but any senator can halt passage of legislation that way. McConnell objected to the request.
Still, McConnell also said on Tuesday that the Senate would consider three of Trump's priorities -- further direct financial support for Americans, reexamining Section 230's protections for technology firms and ballot integrity efforts -- this week. The reexamining of Section 230 came as Trump vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act over not including revisions to the law that shields internet companies from liability for what is posted on their websites by them or third parties.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday ripped a House-passed proposal to increase the amount of stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000, signaling that it won't pass the Senate.
McConnell's remarks underscore that Congress is unlikely to get a proposal to increase the stimulus checks to President Trump's desk by noon Sunday, the start of the 117th Congress.
The House passed a bill Monday to increase the amount of the stimulus checks included in a recent $2.3 trillion package, but McConnell said Wednesday that the Senate would not pass a stand-alone bill on checks.
"The Senate is not going to split apart the three issues that President Trump linked together just because Democrats are afraid to address two of them. The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats rich friends who don't need the help," McConnell said from the Senate floor.
McConnell argued that the House-passed bill "does not align with what President Trump has suggested" and "has no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate."
McConnell and Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) blocked the House bill on the Senate floor on Wednesday. McConnell also blocked it twice on Tuesday.
Instead, the GOP leader is pointing to a competing bill that he introduced on Tuesday that ties an increase in the $600 stimulus checks to a repeal of a liability shield used by tech companies and a commission to review the 2020 election.
"To ensure the president was comfortable signing the bill into law, the Senate committed to beginning one process that would combine three of the president's priorities. ...Three of the president's priorities in one Senate process," McConnell said.
Trump, in his statement on signing the $2.3 deal that included $900 billion for coronavirus relief, said the Senate would "start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230, and starts an investigation into voter fraud."
But that bill, Democrats argue, cannot pass the Senate because it would crater support from Democrats, who have said they would unanimously back the House-passed bill.
"At the very least, the Senate deserves the opportunity for an up-or-down vote on increasing the individual payments to the American people," Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said.
And if the Senate passes any bill besides the language that has already passed the House it would require the legislation to bounce back to the House and be passed. The House has left town until Sunday, when the 117th Congress starts.
If Congress misses the noon deadline on Sunday, it will need to start over again.
President Trump’s push to boost the amount of stimulus checks from
$600 to $2,000 appears to be dead in the water in the GOP-controlled Senate.
Trump is ramping up calls for Congress to increase the amount provided by a recently passed $2.3 trillion deal, an idea that quickly garnered support from Democratic leadership, some House Republicans and a growing number of Senate Republicans.
But a bill to increase the checks faces steep roadblocks — political, policy and procedural — that make it increasingly unlikely that lawmakers will get legislation to Trump’s desk by noon on Sunday, the deadline for the current Congress.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed that the Senate would not pass a stand-alone bill on checks, delivering a death knell to the already uphill chance that the House-passed bill could make it through Congress without significant changes.
"The Senate is not going to split apart the three issues that President Trump linked together just because Democrats are afraid to address two of them. The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats' rich friends who don't need the help," McConnell said.
The GOP leader argued that the House-passed bill "does not align with what President Trump has suggested" and "has no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate."
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and McConnell blocked the House measure on Wednesday, the second day in a row it’s faced setbacks. McConnell blocked the same legislation twice on Tuesday, when Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) tried to pass it and when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) attempted to set up a vote.
McConnell has offered a competing measure that would tie an increase in the checks to removing a legal shield for tech companies and creating a commission to examine the 2020 elections. But that proposal is viewed as a non-starter for Democrats, underscoring that the GOP leader’s bill also is unable to pass the Senate.
“There is no other game in town beside the House bill. ... The House has recessed for the year. Any modification or addition, the House bill cannot become law before the end of this Congress,” Schumer said.
If the Senate passes anything besides the exact language of the House bill, the measure would need to bounce back across the Capitol and passed for a second time by the House, where lawmakers have already left town and aren’t expected to return until Sunday for the swearing in of the 117th Congress.
The stalemate all but guarantees that absent an eleventh-hour deal, the Senate is not likely to pass a checks proposal before noon on Sunday. If Congress fails to act before then, they’ll have to start all over.
The Senate was already going to need a deal just to get a checks vote because lawmakers are currently poised to debate a veto override of an unrelated defense bill until Saturday. Securing such an agreement, senators acknowledge, is highly unlikely.
Asked if a checks bill was not going to pass before Sunday’s deadline, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said: “I think under the circumstances, I think that’s likely true.”
“They’re not willing to consider any other pieces, any other provisions in the bill ... and they want to spend the money on people who frankly haven’t suffered any financial losses during the pandemic,” he added.
Asked about potential political blowback against Republicans for preventing Americans from getting additional money, Cornyn added: “After we spent $4 trillion? No, not in any normal world.”
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s No. 2, added that it was difficult to see how the Senate could wrap up work on a checks proposal absent an agreement, which he acknowledged was unlikely.
“The Dems aren’t going to give us on [Section] 230 and I think on our side it’s probably hard to get consent on the checks,” he said.
The unraveling of the bipartisan push to increase the dollar amount for direct payments comes as the debate has sparked deep divisions among Senate Republicans, underscoring the difficulty supporters faced in getting a bill to Trump’s desk.
A handful of Senate Republicans have thrown their support behind the idea, including Sens. Kelly Loeffler (Ga.) and David Perdue (Ga.), who are fighting for their political lives in two runoff elections that will determine the Senate majority.
But several others are opposed to increasing the funding or have concerns about the structure of the House-passed bill. Because the House bill increased the amount of the checks while retaining the same phase-out structure, higher income households could be eligible for payments.
“I think it’s a very inefficient way,” Thune said, saying he opposed increasing the amount. “If we want to have a discussion about what more we can, I think we can do that next year.”
Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) argued that the recent bill passed by Congress was “targeted,” but “the problem with $2,000 is it's not targeted. It goes to people who didn’t lose any money during this.”
Toomey, who has vowed to block any attempt to vote on a checks bill, argued on Wednesday that it would be irresponsible for Congress to greenlight more money, part of which would go to individuals who have not lost their job during the coronavirus pandemic.
“How does that make any sense at all?” he asked.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, pointed to the cost of increasing the checks.
“Someone’s got to pay for that,” Romney said. “We can’t just have free money. There’s got to be taxation. We have to pay interest on the debt.”
McConnell offered his competing proposal by arguing it aligns with what Trump is seeking. In his signing statement on Sunday, Trump said the Senate would "start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000,” in addition to repealing Section 230 and starting “an investigation into voter fraud."
But Republicans aren’t sold on tying Section 230 to the stimulus checks fight, especially after they left the tech battle out of the National Defense Authorization Act despite Trump’s demands.
