The House voted Monday to increase the second round of federal direct payments to $2,000 as Democrats embrace President Donald Trump’s calls to put more money in Americans’ pockets. CNBC's Eamon Javers reports. For access to live and exclusive video from CNBC subscribe to CNBC PRO: [ Ссылка ]
The House voted Monday to increase the second round of federal direct payments to $2,000 as Democrats embrace President Donald Trump’s calls to put more money in Americans’ pockets.
The measure would boost the stimulus checks in the year-end coronavirus relief and government funding package to $2,000 from $600. The vote came a day after Trump signed the more than $2 trillion pandemic aid and full-year government spending bill into law.
The House passed the payments in a fast-track procedure with just enough support to meet the two-thirds threshold needed. The chamber approved the measure in a 275-134 vote.
Democrats backed the bill by a 231-2 margin. Forty-four GOP representatives supported the measure and 130 voted against it, after days of calls by the Republican Trump to increase the payments to $2,000.
A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., did not immediately respond to a request to comment on whether the chamber would vote on the House-passed bill. In a Sunday statement cheering Trump’s decision to pass the year-end legislation, McConnell did not mention any plans to vote on larger payments.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Monday that he would try to pass the legislation in the Senate on Tuesday.
“Every Senate Democrat is for this much-needed increase in emergency financial relief, which can be approved tomorrow if no Republican blocks it – there is no good reason for Senate Republicans to stand in the way,” he said in a statement.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Monday he would delay the Senate’s plans to override Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act this week unless the chamber votes on the bigger checks.
“Let me be clear: If Senator McConnell doesn’t agree to an up or down vote to provide the working people of our country a $2,000 direct payment, Congress will not be going home for New Year’s Eve. Let’s do our job,” he said in a statement.
Last week, the president called the relief and funding legislation passed by Congress a “disgrace.” He waited days to sign the package after he received it from Congress. Trump claimed he opposed the bill — which his Treasury secretary helped to negotiate and which included many of his White House’s budget priorities — because it included too little direct money to Americans and too much foreign aid.
When asked whether the $600 payments were still on course to go out starting this week as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin previously said, a senior Treasury official said the department expects to make the payments on the same timeline he discussed. If Congress does approve the $2,000 checks, the department will then add to the already issued money.
In a statement explaining his decision to sign the legislation Sunday, Trump noted that the House and potentially the Senate could move to approve larger cash deposits. However, most Republicans in the GOP-held Senate have opposed even a $1,200 check.
Trump’s gambit caps a chaotic eight months of efforts in Washington to send another round of coronavirus relief. Americans waited months for more help after financial lifelines that aided them through the early months of the pandemic expired over the summer. Trump’s delays in signing the year-end bill may cost millions of jobless Americans a week of unemployment benefits after two key relief programs briefly expired.
The president’s signature prevented a government shutdown that would have started Tuesday. More delays also would have jeopardized a federal eviction moratorium, which the bill extends by a month through Jan. 31.
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