The Senate met on Friday for a rare New Year’s Day session to combat the $ 2,000 stimulus checks requested by President Trump.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) Says he will not allow a vote on pandemic payments unless Democrats agree to revoke legal protections for social media companies and establish an election commission. against fraud.
Time is running out. The next session of Congress starts at noon on Sunday, and if the checks are not approved by then, a bill passed by the House dies and would have to be approved again.
“The House Democrats’ project is simply not the right approach,” McConnell said on Friday.
Many conservatives are opposed to increasing newly approved checks from $ 600 to $ 2,000, saying this would add about $ 462 billion to the national debt and could cause inflation.
Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) said on Friday it would be “a shotgun approach where a rifle makes a lot more sense”.
But Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) noted that some Republican senators support the new checks.
“For the first time, we have progressive Democrats, conservative Republicans, the president himself and, of course, the majority – the vast majority of the American people singing the same songbook in support of these controls,” he said.
Schumer said Friday would be the “last chance” to approve larger stimulus checks.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, David Perdue of Georgia and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina support the increase in the value of the check.
“If the Senate does not act today, checks for $ 2,000 will not become law before the end of Congress, and they will know that leader McConnell and the Republican majority prevented them from receiving the checks, quite simply,” said Schumer.
The check struggle has become tied to a different battle over whether to overturn Trump’s veto of a $ 740 billion defense bill. Your veto will be maintained if the Senate vote does not take place by noon on Sunday.
Senators are expected to vote on Friday if they proceed with the annulment of the veto, which would be the first of Trump’s presidency. Sixty votes are needed to end the debate, which means that some Democrats are needed, even without agreement on the $ 2,000 checks.
Trump said he vetoed the defense bill because he did not repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects technology companies that host third-party content, because it aims to restrict the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan from 4,500 in November to 2,500 in January 15 and why it would force the renaming of 10 military bases that honor the confederates.
If larger checks were approved, the amount of relief would decrease for people with higher incomes.
For individual taxpayers without dependents, the amount decreases – for both $ 600 and $ 2,000 bids – for people who earn more than $ 75,000 a year. People who earn more than $ 95,000 – and couples without dependents who earn more than $ 190,000 – receive nothing with either plan.