Pelosi Urges Trump to Press Republicans to Back $2,000 Checks

[jimnyc]

For starters, where the hell were you, Nancy, where in the past few months or more like many months have suffered. Oh, we know where you were. You were either in front of the cameras talking shit about Trump, maybe getting your hair cut or maybe home eating ice cream. We also know that you purposely held things back to harm Trump in the election. You even stated that you now voted for it since a Democrat was in office, that Biden won the election. That's despicable.

So now you want to push Trump, as if the republicans didn't get something right here. Then stating that Trump needs to push McCarthy in order to get it done. :rolleyes:

How about this - put the other one on hold - and sign a relief package for $2k per citizen and that package alone? Does every single bill have to be filled with BS in order to help Americans?

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Pelosi Urges Trump to Press Republicans to Back $2,000 Checks

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a Thursday vote on new legislation boosting stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, urging Republicans to join Democrats in meeting a last-minute demand from President Donald Trump that threw a historic pandemic relief package into doubt.

Pelosi highlighted in a letter to colleagues Wednesday that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s approval will be needed to proceed with a unanimous consent request to boost the payments to $2,000, from the $600 that was part of the pandemic relief package approved late Monday. Trump on Tuesday said the smaller amount wasn’t enough, and he cast doubt over whether he’d sign the $2.3 trillion spending bill.

“If the president truly wants to join us in $2,000 payments, he should call upon Leader McCarthy to agree to our unanimous consent request,” Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats.

The speaker also said that Trump should sign the legislation passed Monday night, which provides $900 billion in pandemic relief and $1.4 trillion in regular federal funding through the end of the fiscal year. Trump would need to sign it by Dec. 28 to avert a lapse in government funding after midnight that day.

“The entire country knows that it is urgent for the president to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open,” Pelosi said in her letter.

The speaker plans to convene the House in a pro-forma session at 9 a.m. Thursday. There’s been no word from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- whose GOP conference had consistently demanded a smaller relief package before signing on to the $900 billion effort on Monday -- on whether his chamber will move on the proposal.

Rest - https://www.newsmax.com/headline/pelosi-trump-stimulus-checks/2020/12/23/id/1002889/

[tailfins]

For starters, where the hell were you, Nancy, where in the past few months or more like many months have suffered. Oh, we know where you were. You were either in front of the cameras talking shit about Trump, maybe getting your hair cut or maybe home eating ice cream. We also know that you purposely held things back to harm Trump in the election. You even stated that you now voted for it since a Democrat was in office, that Biden won the election. That's despicable.

So now you want to push Trump, as if the republicans didn't get something right here. Then stating that Trump needs to push McCarthy in order to get it done. :rolleyes:

How about this - put the other one on hold - and sign a relief package for $2k per citizen and that package alone? Does every single bill have to be filled with BS in order to help Americans?

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Pelosi Urges Trump to Press Republicans to Back $2,000 Checks

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi planned a Thursday vote on new legislation boosting stimulus payments for individuals to $2,000, urging Republicans to join Democrats in meeting a last-minute demand from President Donald Trump that threw a historic pandemic relief package into doubt.

Pelosi highlighted in a letter to colleagues Wednesday that Republican leader Kevin McCarthy’s approval will be needed to proceed with a unanimous consent request to boost the payments to $2,000, from the $600 that was part of the pandemic relief package approved late Monday. Trump on Tuesday said the smaller amount wasn’t enough, and he cast doubt over whether he’d sign the $2.3 trillion spending bill.

“If the president truly wants to join us in $2,000 payments, he should call upon Leader McCarthy to agree to our unanimous consent request,” Pelosi said in a letter to House Democrats.

The speaker also said that Trump should sign the legislation passed Monday night, which provides $900 billion in pandemic relief and $1.4 trillion in regular federal funding through the end of the fiscal year. Trump would need to sign it by Dec. 28 to avert a lapse in government funding after midnight that day.

“The entire country knows that it is urgent for the president to sign this bill, both to provide the coronavirus relief and to keep government open,” Pelosi said in her letter.

The speaker plans to convene the House in a pro-forma session at 9 a.m. Thursday. There’s been no word from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- whose GOP conference had consistently demanded a smaller relief package before signing on to the $900 billion effort on Monday -- on whether his chamber will move on the proposal.

Rest - https://www.newsmax.com/headline/pelosi-trump-stimulus-checks/2020/12/23/id/1002889/

If Trump wants the $2000 stimulus checks, he will need to endorse the Democrats in the Senate runoffs in Georgia. I wouldn't put that past him.

[jimnyc]

Nothing to see here, just another 'we have to sign and pass it in order to see what's in it" crap.

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Trump is totally right to call the stimulus deal a ‘disgrace’

Never averse to drama, President Trump castigated the $900 billion stimulus package Congress passed earlier this week as a “disgrace” in a fiery speech on Tuesday.

“Congress found plenty of money for foreign countries, lobbyists, and special interests, while sending the bare minimum to the American people who need it,” Trump said.

“This bill contains $85.5 million for assistance to Cambodia, $134 million to Burma, $1.3 billion for Egypt and the Egyptian military, which will go out and buy, almost exclusively, Russian military equipment,” the president continued, calling out “$25 million for democracy and gender programs in Pakistan, $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.”

Trump concluded, “I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000, or $4,000 for a couple. I’m also asking Congress to immediately get rid of the wasteful and unnecessary items from this legislation and to send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package.”

While some of the bizarre expenditures Trump cited are technically in the spending bills that were attached alongside COVID-19 relief, not in the relief package itself, his critique of the bloated package is spot on nonetheless. I detailed everything that’s in the massive bill and all its glaring problems in an in-depth analysis for the Foundation for Economic Education, which you can read here.

Here’s the short version: One main problem is that the 5,500-plus page legislative package was drafted behind closed doors by party leaders, then quickly unveiled hours before a vote.

As voices as disparate as Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Libertarian Rep. Justin Amash have pointed out, this meant that most members of Congress had to vote for or against the package before actually getting to read the legislation.

That’s right: Trillions of taxpayer dollars were doled out, and the members of Congress who voted for it don’t even know where much of it is going.

This bill pours hundreds of billions of dollars into preexisting stimulus programs that were rife with waste, fraud, and abuse, without meaningfully addressing any of the problems. You can expect more stimulus checks sent to dead people and more runaway fraud to plague the expanded unemployment benefits.

Moreover, the efficacy of the stimulus package’s core programs is seriously in doubt. For example, it pours hundreds of billions more into the (fraud-rife) Paycheck Protection Program that was created in the spring, hoping to help small businesses stay afloat and keep employees on the payroll.

Yet, more than 25% of the PPP money went to the top 1% of companies the last time around, including sweetheart deals for politicians’ own business interests (California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s company offers a glaring example). And an MIT economist found that PPP largely affected jobs that would have remained anyway, costing $224,000 in taxpayer money per job “preserved.”

So, while we can quibble about specifics, Trump’s general sentiment that the bloated bill is a “disgrace” is completely correct. One should also note that Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin played a key role in stimulus negotiations, meaning the administration really should have fought for these valid concerns before the bill got to the president’s desk.

But Trump is still right. This bill delivers little for the actual people in need, yet contains all sorts of waste, corruption, fraud, cronyism, and abuse.

It remains to be seen: Will Trump put action behind his words, veto the bill, and demand better? Or will he simply cave to the swamp at the taxpayers' expense?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/trump-is-totally-right-to-call-the-stimulus-deal-a-disgrace


The Many Glaring Problems with the New COVID Stimulus Package

Here’s a brief overview of what’s in the behemoth package—and a breakdown of the many glaring problems with it

After months of backroom negotiations and lobbying, leaders in Congress have finally reached an agreement on a second COVID-19 relief bill. The $900 billion package will likely pass this week.

Here’s a brief overview of what’s in the behemoth package—and a breakdown of the many glaring problems with it.

Key Provisions:


$600 “stimulus” checks for American adults who earned less than $75,000 in 2019 with additional $600 per household for each child
A federal $300/week add-on to existing state-level unemployment benefits and a renewal of provisions that expanded unemployment to new groups such as gig economy workers
$325 billion in grants and loans for businesses, largely funneled through the Paycheck Protection Program established in the first stimulus effort


Other Provisions:


An extension of the federal government’s legally dubious and sweeping “eviction moratorium”
$82 billion in funding for schools, mostly for public schools and universities
$69 billion to states for vaccine distribution and COVID-19 contact tracing


The package notably does not include a large, general bailout for state and local governments, a Democratic priority, or a COVID-19 liability shield for businesses, a GOP priority.

The below graphic by the Wall Street Journal neatly visualizes where most of this nearly $1 trillion in additional taxpayer money is (ostensibly) going to go.

https://i.imgur.com/29bg11c.png

What I’ve outlined above gives you a good idea of what’s in the package. But to be clear, this is nowhere near an exhaustive list of what’s in the bill. The final legislation is likely to be hundreds if not thousands of pages long.

Drafted Behind Closed Doors

This brings us to the first glaring problem with this new relief effort. As Rep. Justin Amash has publicly lamented, it wasn’t properly debated or amended by Congress—it was negotiated in backroom meetings by the leadership from both party establishments. Why does this matter? Remember that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tried to slip $350 million for the 50 richest ZIP codes in America into an earlier version of a second stimulus bill, mostly for rich liberal cities. We cannot trust politicians to dole out nearly $1 trillion in the dark.

Unfortunately, many members of Congress will vote on the package without having actually read it in its entirety.

Suffice it to say this is not a responsible or transparent way to spend nearly a trillion taxpayer dollars. Of course, that’s nothing new.

Fraud and Waste Haven’t Been Meaningfully Addressed

The first COVID-19 stimulus bill, the $2 trillion+ CARES Act, was corrupted by waste, fraud, and abuse. The federal government sent more than a million stimulus checks to dead people and many more to random European citizens. The expanded unemployment system it created lost more to fraud alone than the entire system paid out in 2019. And the Paycheck Protection Program was “swamped with potential fraud” as tens of thousands of ineligible companies received money and thousands more were overpaid.

None of these problems have been meaningfully addressed by Congress. So this latest stimulus effort just pours hundreds of billions of taxpayer money into fraud-rife programs without addressing the problem.

The third but hardly final glaring problem with this additional “stimulus” effort is the highly dubious effectiveness of its key initiatives.

$600 ‘Stimulus’ Checks Aren’t Targeted or Effective

The way the key relief efforts are structured makes it highly unlikely they will be very effective.

Consider the “stimulus” checks, for example. Congress plans to send $600 to each American adult who earns less than $75,000. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, legislators are using 2019 data to determine income eligibility. That means they’re using pre-pandemic income measures to determine who is eligible and who is not.

So, millions of people who lost their jobs or livelihood due to COVID-19 lockdowns will not receive checks because they did well back in 2019. Meanwhile, many millions of people who haven’t had their incomes disrupted and can comfortably work from home will receive taxpayer-funded “relief” checks.

Rest - https://fee.org/articles/the-many-glaring-problems-with-the-new-covid-stimulus-package/

[tailfins]

Nothing to see here, just another 'we have to sign and pass it in order to see what's in it" crap.

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Yeah, it sucks. Handing the Senate to the Democrats would suck a quantum leap more.

[jimnyc]

Yeah, it sucks. Handing the Senate to the Democrats would suck a quantum leap more.

2 years of this kind of crap tossed in our faces, along with increased taxes and increase of everything, as the economy and jobs take a dive.

[jimnyc]

So Trump demands more for Americans, almost 4x more. Pelosi, who admitted to obstructing things up until now, also agrees and wants the additional funds. But of course, par for that course, the MSM can't do anything but bitch and moan and complain and blame. They have conditioned themselves into replying in this manner.


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Ugh: Nets Bash Trump Causing 'Christmas Chaos' For Berating Congress's Sad COVID Bill

President Trump rebuked Congress for packing their COVID relief and government funding package with an outrageous amount of pork funding, in a video posted to Twitter last night, before demanding they deliver him a bill which gave much more substantial relief to American families. Predictably on Wednesday, all three network morning newscasts took this rebuke of Congress to blame President Trump for holding up stimulus relief checks, arguing that something was better than nothing. ABC, CBS and NBC even used the opportunity to lie for Democrats, saying they wanted to give more money to Americans, all along.

Journalists at ABC’s Good Morning America were outraged by Trump’s last minute move. ABC’s Rachel Scott might as well have called the President Ebenezer Scrooge, declaring, “That stimulus package would provide aid for millions out of work and fearing eviction but now all of that is up in the air with a threat from the President. This morning, President Trump signaling he won't sign that COVID relief package set to provide aid for millions of Americans.”

ABC also seemed to blame Trump for potentially getting a single mother evicted. "Now that crucial aid on hold for millions like recent graduate Shantay [indiscernable] who says she does not know how she'll be able to support her family and pay her student loans next month," Scott shared. The woman told ABC, “It would be really nice to get a little support so that I don't become homeless so that I can pay my bills.”

Both ABC and NBC completely omitted the President’s reason for rejecting this package: The insane amount of pork stuffed into it, which includes hundreds of millions of dollars of aid to other countries, $40 million to the closed Kennedy Center, $1 billion to the closed Smithsonian, among other things, instead of back to Americans who are struggling. They did note that he wanted the relief payments to be increased from $600 to $2,000 a person--- a position that ABC held just two days ago. On Monday’s World News Tonight, ABC had blasted the relief checks as “too little, too late.”

Over at NBC’s Today, they were equally outraged. White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell fumed, calling it “Christmas week chaos” in her 7:00 a.m. Eastern hour report:


With this surprise threat the President puts desperately needed financial relief in jeopardy with the first of that aid expected to reach Americans in just days, now in doubt, after a Trump-size move undermines his own staff, fellow Republicans, and months of tense negotiations to bring about a COVID relief package.

Rest - https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kristine-marsh/2020/12/23/ugh-nets-bash-trump-causing-christmas-chaos-berating-congresss


People are suffering here in the United States - and now we're sending money to Pakistan for gender programs? WTeffingF?

Congress's 5,593-page porky 'relief' bill is essence of the swamp

The $900 billion stimulus package COVID-19 "relief" bill is exactly what one would expect from a dysfunctional, tone-deaf Congress: a pork-filled cluster filled with anything and everything that has nothing to do with the coronavirus pandemic or relief.

And in the swampiest thing ever, the bill, which is combined with a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill, is 5,593 pages long, or 5,583 pages too many, was given to lawmakers six hours before a vote to review what exactly is in it (hint: more pork than a Tyson Foods plant).

It harkens back to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) once explaining that a bill needed to be passed in order to find out what was in it. In a related story, our government is broken.

The top-line from the bill says a mere $600 per adult and $600 per child goes to those eligible, which is half of what adults received in another relief package passed earlier this year (the per-child payment was $500). Not hard to see that this amount is hardly enough to keep those struggling from staying out of poverty.

So where is the rest of the $1.4 trillion going?

Glad you asked.

Exhibit A: "Of the funds appropriated under title III of the Act that are made available for assistance for Pakistan, not less than $15,000,000 shall be made available for democracy programs and not less than $10,000,000 shall be made available for gender programs." Yep. $10 million. For gender programs. In Pakistan.

Exhibit B: Funds for "Resource Study of Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot." That riot occurred in (checks notes) 1908.

Exhibit C: "Statement Of Policy Regarding The Succession Or Reincarnation Of The Dalai Lama." We'll just leave that one there.

Exhibit D: There's actually a commission tasked with educating “consumers about the dangers associated with using or storing portable fuel containers for flammable liquids near an open flame."

Exhibit E: Another $40 million will be allocated "for the necessary expenses for the operation, maintenance and security" of The Kennedy Center, which received $25 million in another COVID-19 relief bill earlier this year. Also in a related story, the Kennedy Center has been closed.

Exhibits F, G, H, I, J: $86 million for assistance to Cambodia; $130 million to Nepal, $135 million to Burma, $453 million to Ukraine, $700 million to Sudan.

Exhibit K: The bill creates a Women's History Museum and an American Latino Museum as part of the Smithsonian. Overall, the Smithsonian gets (checks notes again) $1 billion.

Rest - https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/531294-congresss-pork-filled-covid-relief-bill

[gabosaurus]

Any agreement passed after this much wrangling is going to filled with pork. To satisfy all the congressional naysayers (both parties). I believe any funding should be targeted more toward small businesses and not be decided on or distributed through banks. Not that I have any stake in this since my family earns too much to get a check of any amount.

[jimnyc]

Any agreement passed after this much wrangling is going to filled with pork. To satisfy all the congressional naysayers (both parties). I believe any funding should be targeted more toward small businesses and not be decided on or distributed through banks. Not that I have any stake in this since my family earns too much to get a check of any amount.

It's supposed to be a relief bill, and they all know it's been a darn long time & that the American citizens they represent should come first and foremost.

I think both sides should be ashamed of themselves and they should make changes in the future when it comes to certain relief bills. Pass them SOLELY with money in it intended for that relief. The hold up, besides Nancy - was likely wrangling over all of the extra bullshit and who gets to get what thrown in there.

[tailfins]

It's supposed to be a relief bill, and they all know it's been a darn long time & that the American citizens they represent should come first and foremost.

I think both sides should be ashamed of themselves and they should make changes in the future when it comes to certain relief bills. Pass them SOLELY with money in it intended for that relief. The hold up, besides Nancy - was likely wrangling over all of the extra bullshit and who gets to get what thrown in there.

Consider it a proportionally small bribe to the corrupt Democrats. Expect too much and get nothing but a Democrat Senate.