The Senate was convened Friday for a rare New Year’s Day session to combat more than $ 2,000 in stimulus checks requested by President Trump.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Says he will not allow voting on pandemic pay unless Democrats agree to repeal legal protections for social media companies and set up a fraud commission electoral.
Time is running out. The next session of Congress begins at noon on Sunday and, if the controls are not passed, the bill passed by the House dies and should be re-approved.
“The House Democrats bill just isn’t the right approach,” McConnell said Friday.
Many conservatives oppose raising the approved $ 600 checks to just $ 2,000, saying about $ 462 billion would be added to the national debt and potentially causing inflation.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said Friday it would be “a shotgun approach where a rifle makes much more sense.”
But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) noted that some Republican senators supported the new controls.
“For once, we have progressive Democrats, conservative Republicans, the president himself, and not to mention the majority, that is, the vast majority of the American people who sing from the same songbook in support of these checks,” he said. .
Schumer said Friday would be the “last chance” to pass the larger stimulus checks.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, David Perdue of Georgia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina support the increase in the amount of the check.
“If the Senate doesn’t take action today, the $ 2,000 checks won’t become law until Congress ends and they’ll know that leader McConnell and the Republican majority have prevented them from getting the checks easily,” Schumer said.
The fight for checks has become a different battle over whether to overturn Trump’s veto on a $ 740 billion defense bill. His veto will be maintained if the Senate vote does not take place at noon on Sunday.
Senators are expected to vote Friday if the veto, which would be the first in Trump’s presidency, is lifted. It takes sixty votes to end the debate, meaning some Democrats are needed, even without an agreement on the $ 2,000 checks.
Trump said he vetoed the defense bill because it did not repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects technology companies that host third-party content because it seeks to hinder their withdrawal of troops from the Afghanistan from 4,500 in November to 2,500 on January 15 and because it would force the renaming of 10 military bases honoring the Confederates.
If larger controls were passed, the amount of relief would decrease for people on higher incomes.
For individual taxpayers without dependents, the amount decreases (for both $ 600 and $ 2,000 proposals) for people earning more than $ 75,000 a year. People who earn more than $ 95,000 and unmarried couples who earn more than $ 190,000 get nothing in either plan.