Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is holding up a $740 billion military spending bill in a bid to force the Senate to vote on a proposal to send $2,000 stimulus checks to most Americans.
Sanders’ procedural gambit is a delay tactic and cannot stop the bipartisan military bill from becoming law. But it can keep the Senate in session through the holiday week and puts political pressure on Senate Republicans and their majority leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to eventually take up the question of higher Covid-relief payments.
Sanders has consistently pushed for direct payments to be included in Covid-19 legislation, and even threatened to shut down the government in the last round of negotiations. The $900 billion omnibus coronavirus package ultimately signed into law by President Trump on Sunday included $600 checks to Americans making $75,000 a year or less.
Trump has called the $600 “ridiculously low” and repeatedly urged Congress to increase the figure to $2,000. The Democratic-controlled House obliged, and swiftly passed legislation boosting the payments.
“President Trump, President-elect Biden, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi are all in agreement. We have got to raise that direct payment to $2,000,” Sanders said Tuesday on the floor of the Senate. “So that is where we are right now in this historic moment. Do we turn our backs on struggling working families, or do we respond to their pain?”
McConnell responded Tuesday by blocking an attempt by Schumer of New York and Sanders to immediately vote on the House-passed legislation upping the $600 payment to $2,000.
The Kentucky Republican suggested he would take up the question of higher direct payments at a later date, but made no concrete commitments. And he also suggested he would attach the $2,000 checks to poison-pill legislation also sought by Trump that many Democrats are almost certain to object to. One has to do with election security and the president’s baseless claims of election fraud, the other would remove some legal liability protections from technology companies.
“Those are the three important subjects the president has linked together. This week the Senate will begin a process to bring those three priorities into focus,” McConnell said.
McConnell’s move means Sanders will use a series of parliamentary maneuvers to delay for several days a veto override vote of the National Defense Authorization Act.
“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,” Sanders said in a statement Monday. “Let’s do our job.”
Trump vetoed the annual defense bill over objections that it considers changing the names of military bases and monuments that honor the Confederacy, and because it did not strip social media companies of liability protections for what their users post. The military spending bill is considered must-pass legislation by congressional leaders, and the House on Monday overrode the president’s veto by overwhelming, bipartisan margins.
It’s unknown at this time if there are enough votes in the Senate to approve the $2,000 checks if the matter were even to come up for a vote. All 48 Democrats in the chamber, along with 12 Republicans, would need to vote in favor of the measure. Senate rules require a supermajority of at least 60 votes on most matters under consideration.
The chances of $2,000 checks making it into law this session are extremely slim. But some political momentum in the GOP is building for the popular measure. To date, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler have said they support the higher payments, according to press reports.
Notably, Perdue and Loeffler are both in high-stakes reelection races in Georgia scheduled for a Jan. 5 runoff, and their Democratic opponents have hammered them for their role in Covid-relief negotiations. The Georgia races will decide who controls the Senate when President-elect Joe Biden takes office, and a Sanders’ delay tactic also has the potential to seriously disrupt Perdue’s and Loeffler’s campaign schedules as they enter the home stretch. That’s by design, a Sanders aide reportedly told Politico.
Eric Davis, a professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College, says it’s very unlikely Sanders will succeed in getting a successful vote on the stimulus checks before this Congress comes to a close at the end of the week. But the fact that the Georgia election will decide who controls the Senate, he said, does give Sanders some leverage and a very narrow window of opportunity.
“If there weren’t the Georgia election next Tuesday, there’s no way Bernie and his colleagues could get 60 votes for $2,000,” he said.
