Democrats are exercising the decision of Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to block quick action to deliver $ 2,000 coronavirus stimulus checks as a club to strike Republican Party officials in the January 5 elections for the Georgia Senate.
Deputy Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Summarized the party’s message in a tweet on Tuesday.
“Mitch McConnell, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue are among his family and a $ 2,000 Georgia survival check,” she posted, before urging voters to pull the lever on Democratic opponents Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) answers questions while speaking during a press conference with other Senate Republicans on December 15, 2020 in Washington, DC. McConnell objected to multiple Democratic attempts to rapidly advance $ 2,000 stimulus checks in the Senate on Tuesday. (Photo by Tom Brenner-Pool / Getty Images)
Both Republican Georgia Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue supported President Trump’s push for $ 2,000 stimulus checks.
But Democrats are actively trying to link them to McConnell, who has not taken a decisive stance on stimulus checks. McConnell said on Tuesday that the Senate “will start a lawsuit” and bring demand for Trump’s stimulus checks and other remaining issues “in focus”.
MCCONNELL BLOCKS FAST VOTE ON $ 2,000 STIMULUS CHECKS, TELLS THE SENATE TO BRING TRUMP REQUESTS ‘IN FOCUS’
“Minority leader Mitch McConnell,” Ossoff tweeted on Tuesday. “But only if you vote.”
“The promises of. @KLoeffler and @Perduesenate are useless while Mitch McConnell controls the Senate and can block a #StimulusCheck that they never really supported,” added Warnock in his own tweet.
McConnell at the Senate floor on Tuesday blocked the maneuvers of two Democrats who would have accelerated stimulus checks in the Senate. First, he objected to a request by the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., to immediately approve the House bill without a vote. This project was approved in the lower house with more than two thirds of support.
So McConnell objected to a request from Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., To set the House’s bill for a favorable or negative vote on Wednesday.
The majority leader on Tuesday introduced a bill that would increase stimulus checks to $ 2,000; repeal Section 230, the controversial legal protection for online platforms that Trump regularly complains about; and establish a committee on the Electoral Assistance Commission to study alleged irregularities in the 2020 elections.
On this July 15th, 2020, photo from the archive Senator Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., Put on a mask while walking with Senator David Perdue, R-Ga., Right, at UPS Hapeville Airport Hub in Atlanta. Both Perdue and Loeffler said they support $ 2,000 stimulus checks. (AP Photo / Evan Vucci, Archive)
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Perdue on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday said it supports the McConnell bill.
“The Democrats themselves kept this up for months and then here at the last minute, they are complaining about the normal functioning of the Senate. I am a stranger in this process, but I can tell you these things that Mitch McConnell is trying to agree with is what president said, “said Perdue. “I support what the president is trying to do with Section 230, its revocation and also the $ 2,000 stimulus checks. We are totally in agreement with that.”
McConnell, from the Senate floor, said the president “linked” these three priorities on Tuesday, probably with the aim of setting the stage for an effort to address all of them together.
But it is highly unlikely that the Senate will get the 60 votes needed to end the debate on the bill. The bill, however, can provide political coverage to Republican senators who want to say that they voted in favor of stimulus checks while loading legislation with poison pills so it doesn’t pass. Schumer called the project a “cynical gambit”.
At least five Republican Party senators have said at this point that they are in favor of $ 2,000 stimulus checks in some way. If all of these senators voted to end the debate over the House’s stimulus check bill – that is, assuming McConnell brings it back to the floor – then there would need to be seven more Republicans voting to support the checks to break an obstruction .
Many Democrats are likely to vote against the McConnell bill, meaning that if that bill comes to a vote to end the debate, it will take significantly more Republicans to support it than those who have defended $ 2,000 checks so far .
Raphael Warnock (left) and Jon Ossoff (right) are Democratic candidates in the Jan. 5 Senate election in Georgia. Democratic candidates and their allies criticized Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., For blocking a quick vote on $ 2,000 stimulus checks in the Senate. (Getty / AP)
(Getty Images // AP)
Republican candidates in the race, for their part, are warning of a clear Biden presidency if Democrats win a majority in the Senate.
“You just have to listen to Chuck Schumer: take Georgia, change America,” Perdue said Tuesday in America’s Newsroom, vaguely quoting the minority leader. “What he meant by that is that he wants to change the obstruction rule, add two states – two Democratic states that would be four Democratic seats. He wants to stack the Supreme Court and eventually change the way the Electoral College works.”
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Perdue added: “This would allow them to perpetrate the agenda that is on the Democratic platform that was on display in the presidential election. They want open borders, they want to strip the police, they want illegal immigrants to vote.”
“That’s it. It all comes down to it,” Loeffler’s campaign communications director Stephen Lawson told Fox News this week, summarizing the campaign’s closing message to voters at the end of a dispute in which the common refrain was “everything is in the air the line.”
Republicans currently control 50 seats in the United States Senate, meaning that if they win one of the contests in Georgia, they will have a majority in the upper house and an effective veto on much of Biden’s agenda.
If Democrats win disputes in Georgia, however, they will lead the body to an effective 50-50 draw. This would allow Vice President-elect Kamala Harris to break ties in votes that follow party lines.
Eddie DeMarche of Fox News contributed to this report.