(CNN) – Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell blocked an effort on Tuesday to quickly approve a measure to increase direct stimulus payments from $ 600 to $ 2,000, although legislation could be voted on one. later date or date if McConnell so chooses.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, tried to approve the change in the general spending bill through a unanimous request for consent in the Senate floor, but any senator can prevent legislation from being passed that way. . McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, opposed the request.
The Chamber approved the increase for stimulus payments on Monday with broad bipartisan support. Democratic leaders cited President Donald Trump’s criticisms of the $ 600 payments as too low and pressure from the Republican Party president to increase stimulus checks in his effort to approve the Senate change.
The measure can be scheduled for a new vote in the Senate at a later date. What McConnell will do remains uncertain on Tuesday night, although the Kentucky Republican has made moves that offer a vision of where he can take the process. McConnell introduced legislation on Tuesday to combine two additional Trump demands for the expansion of direct stimulus payments, increasing Democrats’ concern that the path to expanding stimulus payments would soon be short-circuited.
While the measure does not guarantee that McConnell will bring the bill to a vote, it does provide a substantive option if time – and political winds – press the camera in that direction. It is also one that would almost certainly fail to garner votes for approval.
Many Republican senators objected to an increase in stimulus payments during negotiations for a Covid-19 aid package over the year, citing the plan’s rising price. However, several Republican senators – including two members facing the second round in Georgia next week – have come out in favor of Trump’s pressure to increase payments, even after the previous legislation was passed by Congress last week.
By uniting all of Trump’s demands, particularly with policies that Democrats will almost certainly oppose, McConnell gives himself the option that if he took him to the floor, he would give Republicans something to vote for with little risk of becoming law.
“If we start adding poison pills to the $ 2,000 payment bill, this is just another way of telling the American people that this body does not support $ 2,000 payments,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, about additional provisions.
The previous Tuesday, Schumer urged the Senate to join Trump and the House to increase the size of checks, arguing that “American workers took their chins” during the pandemic.
“The quickest way to put money in Americans’ pockets is to send some of your taxes back where they came from,” he said.
Schumer said that $ 600 “is not enough” for Americans who need extra money to pay for groceries and rent, and dismissed concerns that the proposal would add too much money to the deficit. He said Republicans had already approved nearly $ 2 trillion in tax cuts and recently struggled to include a tax cut for corporate meal expenses.
“I don’t want to hear that we can’t pay for it,” said Schumer.
If the bill gets a full vote in the Senate, it would take at least 12 Republican senators to join all members of the Democratic bench to cross the 60-vote limit to move forward.
“These are the three important issues that the president has linked,” said McConnell. “This week, the Senate will start a process to put these three priorities in focus.”
Vermont independent senator Bernie Sanders, who said he would postpone the vote unless McConnell brings $ 2,000 stimulus checks to the floor for voting, continues to push for bigger checks.
“The leaders of our country, President Trump, President-elect Biden, minority leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are all in agreement,” Sanders said in statements to the floor. “We need to increase the direct payment to $ 2,000. So, this is where we are now, in this historic moment. Do we turn our backs on families struggling to work or respond to their pain? “
Before any action on stimulus payments, the Senate must process the nullification of Trump’s veto. McConnell initially tried to schedule that vote for Wednesday, but Sanders objected and made it clear that he would prolong the process unless the Senate votes up or down on the House-approved stimulus verification measure. Sanders, however, cannot prevent the NDAA’s annulment vote – just prolong it. And the longer this process takes, the more likely it is that no action will be taken on the issue of direct payments before the end of the 116th Congress on Sunday.
The round of stimulus payments at the $ 600 level included in Covid’s $ 900 billion aid package sanctioned on Sunday night is due to begin this week, a government official told CNN, although recognizing that the moment may slip. As in the first round, new payments will begin to be phased out for individuals with an adjusted gross income of more than $ 75,000, and those earning more than $ 99,000 will receive nothing. Income limits would be doubled for couples.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tweeted on Tuesday night that direct payments to Americans could begin to be deposited as early as the evening. Those would be the $ 600 payments included in the aid package that Trump signed on Sunday night.
“. @ USTreasury delivered a payment file to @FederalReserve for Americans’ Economic Impact Payments. These payments may start arriving on some direct deposit accounts as early as this evening and will continue for the next week (1/2), “wrote Mnuchin in a series of consecutive tweets. “Paper checks will start shipping tomorrow. At the end of this week, you can check the status of your payment at http://IRS.gov/GetMyPayment. (2/2) ”
This story was updated with further developments on Tuesday.
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