Last updated on September 25th, 2023 at 08:58 pm
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately called Donald Trump’s last-ditch bluff on the COVID relief package on Tuesday night, telling the president that she supports increasing direct stimulus payments to $2,000.
“Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks,” the Speaker of the House said on Twitter. “At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it!”
Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let’s do it! https://t.co/Th4sztrpLV
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) December 23, 2020
Pelosi’s response came after Trump released a bizarre video in which he blasted the COVID relief bill that his own White House helped negotiate and called on Congress to increase the stimulus payment amount.
Trump said that if Congress didn’t fix his concerns with the relief package, it would be up to the next administration – which he hinted would be him – to come up with a new bill.
Democrats have supported a larger stimulus payment every step of the way
Most folks recognize that a one-time $600 stimulus check is nowhere near enough to keep millions of struggling Americans afloat in the midst of a public health and economic crisis.
But given the fact that Republicans were fiercely opposed to any additional stimulus payments, it was a big win for Democrats that they managed to get direct payments included in the compromise relief package at all.
As members of Congress have spent months negotiating, it’s clear that Trump didn’t take the time to even examine the proposals. If he had, he would have seen that Democrats already passed COVID relief legislation back in May that included stimulus checks for twice the amount that are included in the current bill.
Regardless, Nancy Pelosi is calling Donald Trump’s bluff on Tuesday by telling him that House Democrats are ready to immediately increase stimulus payments to $2,000. The leaves the ball squarely in Mitch McConnell‘s court.
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