Mitch McConnell may eventually kill the $2,000 direct payment, but at the moment he’s about as close to being outmaneuvered as he has been for a long time.
Mike DeBonis and Tony Romm at WaPo:
The shifting Senate winds come a day after the House passed a bill to increase stimulus checks with a bipartisan 275-to-134 vote. That proposal, called the Caring for Americans with Supplemental Help (Cash) Act, aims to boost the $600 payments authorized in the massive year-end spending-and-relief package that Trump signed Sunday by another $1,400 and expand eligibility for them.
McConnell initially blocked consideration of the House bill. But now some Senate Republicans are deserting ship to support the bill, including David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, for some reason (/sarcasm).
McConnell instead took note of Trump’s Sunday statement that called for not only larger checks but also new curbs on large tech companies and an investigation into the November election, and he suggested they would be dealt with in tandem. That tech provision is commonly referred to as “Section 230.”
“Those are the three important subjects the president has linked together,” he said. “This week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.”
Trump is still throwing fits to get people bigger checks and to end tech liability protection.
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP,” Trump wrote. “$600 IS NOT ENOUGH! Also, get rid of Section 230 – Don’t let Big Tech steal our Country, and don’t let the Democrats steal the Presidential Election. Get tough!”
I still am not sure what Trump thinks ending the tech liability protection provision will accomplish, although if it makes Facebook and YouTube and Whatever Social Media Company more careful about what they allow to be published, that might be a good thing.
After McConnell spoke Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) made a request to take up the House-passed bill.
“There’s a major difference in saying you support $2,000 checks and fighting to put them into law,” he said. “The House bill is the only way to deliver these stimulus checks before the end of session. Will Senate Republicans stand against the House of Representatives, the Democratic majority in the Senate and the president of their own party to prevent these $2,000 checks from going out the door?”
Well, look at you, Chuck, getting all confrontational.
Let us also pause to give credit to Bernie Sanders for leading the Senate Democratic charge.
Sanders, with support from the Senate Democratic caucus, plans to use a series of procedural moves to delay a vote on a bipartisan defense authorization bill. These maneuvers can’t prevent the defense bill from becoming law, but that’s not really the point. The bill is considered a must-pass, and Sanders’s objections can delay passage, annoy Senate Republicans, and potentially force Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to raise a series of objections that could damage his party’s ability to hold onto its Senate majority.
And Sanders also has a clear demand: He will lift his objections to an immediate vote on the defense bill if McConnell permits a vote on legislation providing $2,000 checks to Americans earning less than $75,000 a year.
Of course there’s a lot else to criticize about the relief bill than the size of the direct payments, but it’s not often that Mitch and the Republican Party get snagged in the boy parts this tightly.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined from left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, dismisses the impeachment process against President Donald Trump saying, “I’m not an impartial juror. This is a political process,” as he meets with reporters at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)