Increased stimulus checks remain in limbo in the Senate, where lawmakers are gathering Wednesday to begin the process of overriding President Trump’s veto of a critical defense bill.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blocked quick consideration of a House-passed bill to boost a new round of checks from $600 to $2,000 per individual.
Instead, he proposed a measure that would combine the House bill with provisions Trump has been seeking to repeal a Big Tech lawsuit liability shield and to create a commission to study the integrity of federal elections.
Democrats consider the additional provisions “poison pills” and will not back this bundled legislation, so it’s not expected to pass this week or by the end of the 116th Congress, which expires at 11:59 a.m. on Jan. 3.
Democrats on Tuesday sought to pressure the GOP to take up the House-passed bill that simply increased the stimulus checks at the cost of $464 billion. The measure passed the House with the backing of more than 40 GOP lawmakers.
“Senator McConnell knows how to make $2,000 survival checks reality, and he knows how to kill them,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat. “If Sen. McConnell tries loading up the bipartisan House-passed CASH Act with unrelated, partisan provisions that will do absolutely nothing to help struggling families across the country, it will not pass the House and cannot become law — any move like this by Sen. McConnell would be a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check.”
The $600 checks are included in a $900 billion coronavirus relief package Trump signed into law on Sunday night. While Trump signed the bill, he called on Congress to increase the checks to $2,000 and rescind some of the $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2021 government spending that Congress passed along with the virus aid package.
Republicans are divided over the additional stimulus money.
Some have called for a vote on the House bill, among them Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Others, such as Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, said additional money should be targeted to the neediest. Under the current program, she said. Checks end up going to higher-income families in some cases.
“I am concerned the way it is structured it would also benefit upper-income individuals because it does not phase out as quickly as the $600 check,” Collins told reporters in the Capitol on Tuesday. “I don’t know whether it’s possible put a cap on it or make some changes or whether this is going to be an all-or-nothing vote.”
Collins said it was “a big mistake” to wrap the Big Tech lawsuit shield repeal in with the stimulus check payments, as McConnell has done.
Most Republicans believe the lawsuit language should be reformed but in separate legislation.
The Senate will convene Wednesday afternoon to begin consideration of Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act. Trump disagrees with several provisions in the bill and sought language to strip out the Big Tech lawsuit shield.
The House voted to override the veto on Monday and the Senate is likely to do the same, which will hand Trump his first defeat after eight successful vetoes during his tenure.
If McConnell changed course and agreed to bring up the House-passed bill increasing stimulus checks, other GOP lawmakers would likely object.
Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he opposes simply bolstering the stimulus checks, which he noted, are provided to people even if they are not unemployed. Toomey said expanded unemployment benefits and loans to small businesses that were provided in the $900 billion COVID-19 aid package are what is needed to help unemployed workers.
“This targeted assistance is far more effective, efficient, and appropriate than large universal payments to people who had no lost income,” Toomey said. “Blindly borrowing or printing another two-thirds of a trillion dollars so we can send $2,000 to children, the deceased, and tens of millions of workers who haven’t missed a paycheck, like federal and state employees, is not sound economic policy nor is it something I am willing to support.”
