The roadblock set up Tuesday by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may not be sustainable as pressure increases. Trump wants the Republican-led House to follow the House and increase the $ 600 checks for millions of Americans. A growing number of Republicans, including two senators in the January 5 runoff election in Georgia, have said they will support the largest number. But most Republican senators are opposed to spending more, even if they are also wary of fooling Trump.
Senators will return on Wednesday as McConnell is designing a way out of the political bond, but the outcome is highly uncertain.
“One question remains today: do Republicans in the Senate team up with the rest of America to support $ 2,000 checks?” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer said when he introduced a motion to vote.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said some of the $ 600 payments could be sent by direct deposit to Americans ’bank accounts as early as Tuesday night. Mnuchin has tweeted that the paper checks will start coming out on Wednesday.
.@USTreasury has delivered a payment file to @FederalReserve for Americans ’economic impact payments. These payments may begin to reach some accounts by direct deposit tonight and will continue next week (1/2).
– Steven Mnuchin (@ stevenmnuchin1) December 29, 2020
He added that next week residents will be able to check the status of their payments to irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment.
The clash of $ 2,000 checks has turned Congress into a chaotic end-of-year session just days before new lawmakers are committed to taking office for the new year. He avoids action on another priority: overturning Trump’s veto on a defense bill that has been passed every year for 60 years.
To put it bluntly, McConnell pointed to an alternative approach to Trump’s controls that may not divide his party so badly, but that may result in no action.
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The Republican Party leader introduced new legislation Tuesday afternoon that links the president’s demand for greater controls with two other Trump priorities: repealing protections for technology companies like Facebook or Twitter that the president denounced are unfair to the Conservatives, as well as the establishment of a bipartisan commission to review the 2020 lost presidential election against President-elect Joe Biden.
“The Senate will begin a process,” the Republican Party leader said. He said little else, only that it would bring “to focus” the president’s demand for the $ 2,000 checks and other remaining issues.
The president’s last-minute push for greater control makes Republicans deeply divided between those who align with Trump’s populist instincts and those who adhere to what had been more traditional conservative views. against government spending. Congress had agreed to payments under $ 600 in a pledge to the big year-end relief bill that Trump reluctantly signed into law.
Liberal senators led by Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, who support aid assistance, are blocking the action of the defense bill until a vote can be cast on Trump’s $ 2,000 demand for a majority. Americans.
“The working class in this country is facing more economic despair today than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” Sanders said as he also tried to force a vote on relief checks. “Working families need help now.” But McConnell opposed it a second time.
The Republican Party blockade is causing turmoil in some, as the virus crisis worsens across the country and Trump expands his unexpected demands.
Georgia’s two Republican Party senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, announced Tuesday that they support Trump’s plan for larger checks as they face Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in the election that will determine which party controls the Senate.
“I’m happy to support the president,” Perdue told Fox News. Loeffler said in an interview with Fox that she also supports driven relief checks.
Trump repeated his demand in a tweet before Tuesday’s session in the Senate: “$ 2,000 for our great people, not $ 600!”
Following Trump’s leadership, Republican Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio of Florida, among potential candidates for the party’s presidency in 2024, are pushing the party in the president’s leadership.
“We have the votes. Let’s vote today,” Hawley tweeted.
Other Republicans reviewed the larger controls, saying the price of about $ 400 billion was too high, that the relief is not aimed at those who need it, and Washington has already sent large amounts of COVID aid.
“We have spent $ 4 trillion on this issue,” said Sen. John Cornyn of R-Texas.
The House vote Monday afternoon to approve Trump’s request was an impressive turnaround. A few days ago, during a brief Christmas Eve session, Republicans blocked Trump’s sudden demand for larger checks as he refused challenging him to sign COVID-19’s broader law on aid and funding at the end. of the year.
As Trump spent days smoking from his private club in Florida, where he spends the holidays, millions of Americans watched as jobless aid had fallen and the nation risked closing down the federal government on Tuesday.
Dozens of Republicans figured it was better to relate to Democrats to increase pandemic payments rather than reject the president and outgoing voters counting on the money. House Democrats led the way, 275-134, but 44 Republicans joined almost every Democrat to get a robust two-thirds approval vote.
It is very possible that McConnell will set votes ahead of both the House-approved measure that supports Trump’s $ 2,000 checks and his new version that relates it to the repeal of the tech companies’ shield of responsibility. in Article 230 of the Communications Act, as well as the new presidential election review commission.
This is a process that almost guarantees that neither bill will pass.
Trump’s push could explode in the Senate, but the debate over the size and scope of the package – $ 9 billion in COVID-19 aid and $ 1.4 trillion to fund government agencies – is potentially a final confrontation before the new Congress is sworn in on Sunday.
For now, the $ 600 checks will be delivered, along with other grants, among the largest rescue packages of their kind.
Part of the COVID-19 bill revives a weekly increase in pandemic unemployment benefits (this time $ 300 through March 14), as well as the popular Payroll Protection Program of subsidies to companies to keep workers on payroll . It expands protection against evictions and adds a new rent assistance fund.
Americans earning up to $ 75,000 will qualify for direct payments of $ 600, which are gradually eliminated at higher income levels, and there is an additional payment of $ 600 per dependent child.
Biden supports the $ 2,000 checks and said Tuesday that the aid package is only a “down payment” of what he plans to deliver once in charge.
Economists said a $ 600 check will help, but that it is far from the spending power that a $ 2,000 check would provide to the economy.
“It will make a big difference if it’s $ 600 versus $ 2,000,” said Ryan Sweet, an economist at Moody’s.
The president also opposed funding for foreign aid his own administration had requested and pledged to send Congress a “redefined version” of the spending items he wants to eliminate. But these are just suggestions to Congress. Democrats said they would resist those cuts.
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Colvin reported from West Palm Beach, Florida. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta, Ashraf Khalil in Washington and Matt Ott in Silver Spring, Maryland, contributed to this report.
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