McConnell combines $2,000 stimulus with legislation to study voter fraud
'Unless Republicans have a death wish, they must approve the payments ASAP.'
Senator Mitch McConnell blocked the Democrats’ push on Tuesday to increase stimulus checks to $2,000 from $600.
The GOP leader is instead calling for a single piece of legislation that combines the relief aid with Trump’s demands that lawmakers address election fraud and remove legal protections for social media platforms under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
Read More: Mitch McConnell seeks to end coronavirus paid sick leave program
It seems Trump has decided that the survival of those greatly impacted by the COVID pandemic should be tied to his ability to get revenge on Twitter for anticonservative bias and censoring supporters of the president.
“Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP,” Trump tweeted on Tuesday (Dec. 29). “$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!”
McConnell pledged early Tuesday that the Senate will “begin the process” of addressing the issues raised by the president.
“If we start adding poison pills to the $2,000 payment bill, that is just another way of telling the American people that this body doesn’t support $2,000 payments,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, said of the additional provisions, per CNN.
Read More: Sanders says he’ll hold up defense bill unless Senate approves vote on $2K stimulus checks
theGRIO previously reported, the stimulus package — $900 billion in COVID-19 aid and $1.4 trillion to fund government agencies — will deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and averted a federal government shutdown that otherwise would have started Tuesday.
Together with votes this week to override Trump’s veto of a sweeping defense bill, it’s potentially one last confrontation between the president and the Republican Party he leads as he imposes fresh demands and disputes the results of the presidential election. The new Congress is set to be sworn in Sunday.
“If Senator McConnell tries loading up the bipartisan House-passed CASH Act with unrelated, partisan provisions that will do absolutely nothing to help struggling families across the country, it will not pass the House and cannot become law,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. “Any move like this by Sen. McConnell would be a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check.”
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, noted that “the working class of this country today faces more economic desperation than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”
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