House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a Thursday vote on new legislation boosting stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, urging Republicans to join Democrats in meeting a last-minute demand from President Donald Trump that threw a historic pandemic relief package into doubt.
Pelosi highlighted in a letter to colleagues Wednesday that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s approval will be needed to proceed with a unanimous consent request to boost the payments to $2,000, from the $600 that was part of the pandemic relief package approved late Monday. Trump on Tuesday said the smaller amount wasn’t enough, and he cast doubt over whether he’d sign the $2.3 trillion spending bill.
“If the president truly wants to join us in $2,000 payments, he should call upon Leader McCarthy to agree to our unanimous consent request,” Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats.
The speaker also said that Trump should sign the legislation passed Monday night, which provides $900 billion in pandemic relief and $1.4 trillion in regular federal funding through the end of the fiscal year. Trump would need to sign it by Dec. 28 to avert a lapse in government funding after midnight that day.
“The entire country knows that it is urgent for the president to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open,” Pelosi said in her letter.
The speaker plans to convene the House in a pro-forma session at 9 a.m. Thursday. There’s been no word from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- whose GOP conference had consistently demanded a smaller relief package before signing on to the $900 billion effort on Monday -- on whether his chamber will move on the proposal.
Trump’s Attack
Trump slammed Monday’s bill as a “disgrace” for not doing enough for Americans in need. The charge came less than 24 hours after Congress approved the legislation with overwhelmingly bipartisan votes. He also called for eliminating “wasteful and unnecessary items,” but he didn’t say whether he would veto the bill.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump’s top allies, urged him to sign the existing bill to get relief to struggling businesses and families.
Graham noted Pelosi’s intention to go ahead with boosting the stimulus checks, and suggested that it be twinned with a separate Trump priority -- the repeal of a law protecting social-media companies from liability for most of their user-generated content.
The president has separately threatened to veto a giant annual defense-spending bill, for several reasons including its lack of a provision to repeal these protections for social-media companies. Republicans and Democrats alike argued that such a measure needed to be considered separately from the National Defense Authorization Act.
Trump would need to follow through on his veto threat of the defense bill on Wednesday, or it becomes automatically becomes law. Graham suggested that combining the repeal of the social-media measure with the $2,000 checks would persuade the president to sign both pending pieces of legislation. Pelosi hasn’t addressed his pitch.
“I have reason to believe this combination will lead to President Trump supporting the NDAA and COVID19 omnibus bills,” Graham tweeted Tuesday.
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