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Bottom line: There is absolutely no sign at this time that an independent $ 2,000 check bill is going to be voted on in the Senate. It looks like McConnell is just going to run out of time. There were several times on Tuesday that McConnell could have made that guarantee or allowed Democrats to pass the bill with a unanimous consent agreement that would have protected his members from having to take a potentially difficult vote.
Instead, he gave himself an exit card down the road, and only if he needs it, by placing a bill on the calendar that would link the repeal of Section 230 to the increase in direct stimulus payments to $ 2,000 for Americans with a certain level of income. . The Kentucky Republican may never mention it. It’s there in case you need to put something down. The Democrats were furious. And there is nothing they can do about it.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
tweeted Tuesday night that direct payments to Americans were expected to start coming in immediately. These would be the $ 600 payments included in the aid package that President Donald Trump signed on Sunday night.
McConnell vs. Trump
It’s important to remember that McConnell is essentially ignoring Trump’s request at this point. Remember, you never made any promises to Trump about what he would or would not do in the Senate. Trump’s statement Sunday night was full of things he thought he had won. McConnell made no such mention of keeping those promises in his own statement of thanks to Trump. In many ways, this moment is not that different from how McConnell has handled Trump for four years, letting the president rant and vent only to quietly run things in the way he thinks is best for his members in his life. own chamber (remember how when the tax bill was drafted, McConnell ignored Trump’s later requests to mention health care for the umpteenth time).
Trump tweeted Tuesday that unless senators had a
“desire of death,” they better vote fast on checks for $ 2,000. This is a time to remember that McConnell literally wrote a memoir titled “The Long Game.” McConnell is not focusing on the next five days or even the final weeks of the Trump presidency. He’s thinking mostly and his legacy far beyond that. Right now, the leadership assistants tell me the idea is that it may be enough for Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia to campaign on the fact that they support $ 2,000 checks. They do not need to show that they voted for it. Giving in to a president, who had a negotiator in the room who agreed to checks for $ 600 and is intimidating members into voting “yes” over something that goes against the principles of fiscal conservatism on which they built their careers, that’s not exactly McConnell’s style.
Republican opposition to bigger checks
At the end of the day, many Republicans are still very uncomfortable with the idea of $ 2,000 checks for people who made less than $ 75,000. Even if they supported direct payments in some way, they are not comfortable with the bill passed by the House. Sen. John Cornyn, a leading Texas Republican, told reporters Tuesday that he doesn’t want the money to be “manna from heaven” for those who have been employed all this time. He argued that if they voted for larger checks, they would have to be much more targeted at people who have been out of work. That opinion is shared among many members. Yes, a handful of Republican senators have declared that they would vote by checks for $ 2,000. But keep in mind that none of them have explicitly said they would vote for the House bill.
“This is all funny money, borrowed money right now. And that’s another consideration, I mean being ridiculously frivolous about the way we spend money and accumulate debt. I think people are willing to do what we have to do. when they feel like I’m meeting a need and it’s an emergency, which we’ve already done and will probably continue to do. But this is, I think, opportunistic on the part of the House, “Cornyn said. “They think they now have, they have a problem. Unfortunately, it seems to be drowning out all the other good things we’ve done: $ 4 trillion in public health relief and the economy, including these same people.”
stay tuned
Let’s never rule anything out. Change of dynamics. If anything in the polls in Georgia starts to change to the point where McConnell feels he needs to give Perdue and Loeffler a vote, he will. And now you have one on the calendar that you can bring. Cornyn summed it up best when asked if he thought checks would be done: “I’ve stopped making predictions around here. I didn’t think I’d be here today either. So I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.”
Meanwhile: there is still at least one objection to moving to a final vote to annul the National Defense Authorization Law. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has shown no willingness to back down on his demands for a guarantee that there will be a vote on the checks. At this point, the senators will return for a procedural vote Wednesday night at 5 p.m. ET. That vote is simply procedural. A final vote to override could be extended through Saturday if Sanders continues to hold out. Eventually, it will pass. It’s just a question of how long it takes.
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