LOS ANGELES (KABC) — More people without underlying conditions are dying from COVID-19 in Los Angeles County, officials said citing recent data. During a New Year’s Eve virtual briefing, County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said that 86% of people who died from COVID in 2020 had underlying conditions. This figure is down from more than 90% in the early days of the pandemic.
“This indicates, that in fact, that more people than ever are not only passing away, but passing away without any underlying health conditions,” Ferrer said. Ranging from “someone’s mother” to “a friend you haven’t talked to since middle school,” the #Every10Minutes tweets emphasize how one person in Los Angeles County is dying from COVID-19 every 10 minutes.
Thursday was yet another record-setting day of COVID-19 deaths for the region. The county on Thursday reported a pandemic-high of 7,546 people in hospitals due to COVID-19, with 20% of them in intensive care.
With increased hospitalizations come increased deaths, and the county on Thursday reported another record number of fatalities — 290 — although some of those deaths were attributed to a reporting backlog dating back to the Christmas holiday weekend. This puts the total COVID death toll for L.A. County at 10,345.
The county announced another 15,129 confirmed COVID-19 infections, raising the countywide total since the pandemic began to 770,602. The overall rate of people testing positive for the virus stood at 15%, but the current daily rate is much higher, at about 22%, meaning more than 1 in 5 people who are tested for the virus test positive. Meantime, the crunch at hospitals continues to get worse.
The new, more contagious variant of COVID-19 that was first observed in the United Kingdom has now made its way to Southern California, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday. “The current surge of patients … it’s kind of a hidden disaster,” said Cathy Chidester, director of the county Emergency Medical Services agency. “It’s not a fire. It’s not an earthquake. It’s not a train wreck that’s right in the public view and they can see what is happening and they can avoid that area. It’s all happening behind the doors of households and hospitals. So nobody is really, the general public, is not really seeing what is going on.”
Chidester said there are reports of hospitals being so overwhelmed that ambulances are waiting seven or eight hours in emergency bays, forcing patients to be treated in the ambulance. But more importantly, the delay is keeping the ambulances out of service, leaving them unable to respond to additional emergency medical calls, she said.
The crisis at hospitals have some facilities reassigning nurses from outpatient clinics to emergency and COVID units, reducing patient access across the board. Public health officials are urging residents to stay home and not attend gatherings.
A classic head to head – Pfizer versus Oxford – efficacy. the two vaccines have not yet been tested head to head, so it’s impossible to say which is best.
But it is true, of course, that the Pfizer vaccine boasts an efficacy of 95 per cent, compared to something around the 70 per cent mark from Oxford. Immunity also appears to kick in a bit quicker with the Pfizer jab at 14 days, compared to 22 for Oxford’s shot.
In theory, at least, Pfizer’s RNA technology (although never used before in a mass vaccination programme) is also “cleaner” in the sense that the RNA code snippet it uses to deliver immunity vanishes from the body soon after doing its job. But such comparisons are largely academic. The trial data for both vaccines is robust but limited and the real numbers on efficacy will only emerge a few years down the line once tens of millions of doses have been administered. Much more important is that both vaccines, based on the trial data available, appear highly effective at protecting against severe disease. In all the trials run to date, no one vaccinated has been hospitalised or died of Covid-19. Experts are not yet certain if either prevent against transmission.
Vaccines secured by the government and current state of development
Both jabs also appear to be safe. Like many vaccines, they cause some short term discomfort in roughly one in 10 people and vomiting and fever in about one in 100. But more serious vaccine-specific adverse effects have not been reported. It remains possible issues may emerge in the months to come but tens of thousands of people have now been given the Oxford vaccine with no ill effects and millions have received the Pfizer immunisation. “The MHRA will have carefully scrutinised the evidence on this Covid-19 vaccine to ensure that it is both safe and effective,” said Prof Arne Akbar, president of the British Society for Immunology. “Although development of this vaccine has occurred quickly, all the same rigorous safety standards and checks have still been carried out.” The most obvious and certain differences between the two jabs are practical ones concerning logistics and cost. Just as with cars, different vaccines are better suited to some tasks than others, and on this measure the Oxford shot shines bright – a Fiat Punto, compared to Pfizer’s Porsche. While the Pfizer jab must be “deep frozen” and used within five days of leaving the dry-ice containers it is shipped in, the Oxford jab can be kept in a fridge, between 2 and 8C for up to six months. This will be a huge relief to those orchestrating the biggest vaccination effort in history, both in Britain and overseas. “We have concerns over the logistical challenges the Pfizer vaccine has left us with. It’s been hugely difficult to manage – the deep freeze conditions, the rapid timeframe it needs to be used in,” said Dr Richard Vautrey, chair of the BMA’s GPs’ committee. “It’s been a mammoth task for practices… We hope the AstraZeneca vaccine will remove many of these problems because it can be stored in a standard fridge and there are going to be more doses available.” And then there are the costs. The UK government won’t say what it is paying for the Pfizer vaccine, citing commercial confidentiality, but leaked figures show the EU is paying over £10 per dose. The Oxford shot, in contrast, comes in at around £1.60 and the company has pledged to continue to provide it at cost until the summer. In low and middle-income countries, it will continue to be sold at cost in perpetuity – perhaps the single best prospect of bringing the pandemic to an end globally. Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said: “The Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine is extremely attractive in that it is inexpensive, scalable, and can be stored at 2-8 degrees Celsius. “These attributes will enable its use worldwide, including in low-income and middle-income countries, alongside other safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines, and the large supplies that will become available in 2021 mean that this vaccine could be a gamechanger in terms of our efforts to end the acute phase of the pandemic.” And what of mutations? It’s unlikely the new variant of the virus it will have much, if any, impact on either vaccine and we will only find out as the jabs are administered, say experts. Over time – a year or more – all Covid vaccines may need to be tweaked like the annual flu jab to keep up with “viral drift”, they add.
Hundreds of senior citizens in Lee County, Florida, camped out overnight this week in hopes of getting their first doses of COVID-19 vaccines.
Photos show long lines of people sitting in chairs and wearing layers of clothing to keep warm as they waited overnight.
The county announced on Sunday that vaccines would be available on a first-come, first-serve basis to people over the age of 65 and healthcare workers.
Each vaccine site had reached capacity before even opening each day this week, local outlets WZVN-TV and News-Press reported.
The long lines occurred in Lee County, where health officials sent out a press release on Sunday saying doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the county would be available on a first-come, first-serve basis to high-risk healthcare workers and people 65 years old and over. In the hours and days that followed, hundreds of elderly people – some of whom were in their 90s – lined up outside several vaccination sites across the county, WZVN-TV and News-Press, a local Florida newspaper, reported. Many of them spent nights outside, in temperatures that dropped as low as 47 degrees Fahrenheit. Vaccine sites hit capacity in the early morning hours of Monday, but people returned to line up for vaccines in the following days. The sites hit capacity on Tuesday and Wednesday, too.
Photos from the scene show people sitting in chairs and covered in blankets as they waited outside for hours hoping to get the vaccine
CDC officials said Wednesday that the new strain of Covid-19 that was discovered in the U.K. could further stress hospitals that are already overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.
The CDC’s Dr. Henry Walke said the new variant appears to spread “more easily and quickly than other strains,” but it does not appear to cause more severe disease or increased risk of death.
He added that considering how widely the variant has spread in the U.K., the arrival of the variant in the U.S. “was expected.” Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that a new strain of Covid-19 now circulating in the U.S. could further stress hospitals that are already overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Colorado health officials announced Tuesday that they detected the first known case of the new and more infectious strain of the virus that was first discovered in the United Kingdom. A second separate new strain first identified in South Africa may also already be circulating in the U.S. as well, CDC officials said. “Because the variants spread more rapidly, they could lead to more cases and put even more strain on our already heavily burdened health-care systems,” Dr. Henry Walke, the agency’s Covid incident manager, said on a conference call with reporters Walke said the available data indicate that the new variant spreads “more easily and quickly than other strains,” but it does not appear to cause more severe disease or increased risk of death. He noted that the individual in Colorado who was infected with the new strain of the virus did not have a travel history, which “suggests this variant has been transmitted from person to person in the United States.” He added that considering how widely the variant has spread in the U.K., the arrival of the variant in the U.S. “was expected.” “Viruses constantly change through mutation and we expect to see new variants emerge over time,” he said. “Many mutations lead to variants that don’t change how the virus infects people. Sometime, however, variants emerge that can spread more easily, like these.”
He added that “experts believe our current vaccines will be effective against” both of the new strains. Scientists are still studying how the new strain responds to Covid-19 treatments like monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma. Dr. Greg Armstrong, the director of the CDC’s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection, said the assertion that the vaccines will be effective against the new variant is based on “experience with similar previous mutations.” He added that immunity induced through previous infection from a different strain is also probably effective against these new strains. National and state laboratories around the country are conducting testing to determine whether other variants are present in the U.S. and how widely the variant that was discovered in the U.K. is spreading. He said the CDC is ramping up the national surveillance program so that they’ll be receiving 750 samples per week for sequencing. He added that the agency is contracting with seven academic centers around the country to sequence samples and search for new variants locally. Those centers, he said, are in Boston, Massachusetts New Haven, Connecticut, Athens, Georgia, Nashville, Tennessee, Madison, Wisconsin, and the Scripps Institute in San Diego, California. “There are a lot of laboratories that have this capacity around the U.S.,” he said of testing for the new variant. “A lot of them are looking for this variant right now.
WILMINGTON, Del./DENVER, Dec 29 (Reuters) – The first known U.S. case of a highly infectious coronavirus variant discovered in Britain was detected in Colorado on Tuesday as President-elect Joe Biden warned it could take years for most Americans to be vaccinated against COVID-19 at current distribution rates. Biden’s prediction of a grim winter appeared aimed at lowering public expectations that the pandemic would be over soon after he takes office on Jan. 20, while putting Congress on notice that wants to significantly increase spending to expedite vaccine distribution, expand COVID testing and help reopen shuttered schools. Biden, a Democrat, said about 2 million people have received the initial dose of one of two nearly approved two-doze vaccines, well short of the 20 million that outgoing Republican President Donald Trump had promised by year’s end. “The effort to distribute and administer the vaccine is not progressing as it should,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. At the current rate, “it’s going to take years, not months, to vaccinate the American people.”
Shortly after Biden’s remarks, Colorado Governor Jared Polis said his state had discovered the nation’s first known case of the highly infectious coronavirus variant B.1.1.7, which was originally documented in the United Kingdom. Scientists there believe the variant is more contagious than other previously identified strains of the SAR-CoV-2 variant but no more severe in the symptoms it causes.
It has also been detected in several European countries, as well as in Canada, Australia, India, South Korea and Japan, among others. Polis said in a statement the infected patient was a man in his 20s with no recent travel history who is currently in isolation in Elbert County, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of the greater Denver metropolitan area. “Public health officials are doing a thorough investigation” and the individual has “no close contacts identified so far,” Polis said, adding that the state had notified the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Colorado State Laboratory scientists confirmed the UK variant after noticing that a diagnostic test sample was missing a key gene signal, prompting them to sequence the patient’s viral genome.
This revealed eight mutations specific to the spike protein gene associated with the British variant, Polis said in his statement.
The Denver-based online news outlet Coloradopolitics.com, citing Elbert County’s public health director, later reported that a second suspected case of the variant was under examination there. Although experts believe the newly approved COVID vaccines will be effective against the British variant, the emergence of a more highly transmissible strain of the virus makes a swift rollout of immunizations all the more critical. Trump defended his administration’s record after Biden concluded his remarks. “It is up to the States to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the Federal Government. We have not only developed the vaccines, including putting up money to move the process along quickly, but gotten them to the states,” he said on Twitter.
Efforts to increase stimulus payments to $2,000 were blocked in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, while Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put forth a new bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders was one of those making the case for higher stimulus payments.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Tuesday blocked two Democratic attempts to approve a bill that would provide $2,000 tax rebate payments to Americans instead of the $600 lawmakers approved just last week. McConnell first objected to a unanimous consent request from Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer that the chamber immediately pass the bill. He then objected to Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders’ request that the Senate approve the bill after it votes to override President Donald Trump’s veto of the annual defense policy bill. Sanders then objected to McConnell’s attempts to set up a veto override vote on the defense bill Wednesday, likely delaying that vote until Jan. 1 at the earliest.
The impasse about when and how the Senate would bring up a bill to increase the direct payments will likely become intertwined with addressing election security and overhauling a 1996 law that provides some legal protections to social media companies and other websites for the content posted on their platforms. That provision is often referred to as Section 230.
Trump listed all three as issues he wants lawmakers to address when he signed the $1.4 trillion omnibus and coronavirus relief package into law on Sunday. And McConnell introduced a bill later Tuesday to package all three elements together, infuriating Schumer who said the move was “a blatant attempt to deprive Americans of a $2,000 survival check.” McConnell’s bill release came after Trump published a series of tweets calling party leaders “weak and tired” and saying overriding his veto was “a disgraceful act of cowardice.” “Negotiate a better Bill, or get better leaders, NOW! Senate should not approve NDAA until fixed!!!” he wrote, using the acronym for the National Defense Authorization Act.
The McConnell bill would increase direct payments to $2,000; repeal Section 230; and establish an 18-member bipartisan advisory committee to “study the integrity and administration of the general election for Federal office held in November 2020 and make recommendations to Congress to improve the security, integrity, and administration of Federal elections.”
During his floor remarks, McConnell didn’t clarify exactly how the Senate will deal with the bill, but he did say “this week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.”
Schumer and Democrats rebuked McConnell for not allowing a quick vote on a bill the House passed with bipartisan support in a 275-134 vote Monday.
“I don’t want to hear it that it costs too much to help working families get a check when they’re struggling to keep their jobs … pay their rent, feed their families and live a halfway normal and decent life,” Schumer said. Sanders doubled down, saying, “Hunger in America is at the highest level that it has been for decades, with moms and dads struggling to feed their kids and working families lining up mile after mile to get emergency food packages.” Several Republicans support the Senate approving $2,000 stimulus payments, especially after Trump posted several tweets demanding the bill’s approval. Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., signaled to reporters Tuesday she’s open to approving the bill but indicated that she’s opposed to rolling all three issues together into one package. “I don’t like everything rolled in together. I think you end up with bad policy,” Fischer said. “And I realize that in many cases you have to throw a lot of stuff in to get the votes, but we need to assume the responsibilities we’ve been given and really start to prioritize what the needs are of the people of this country.” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who was pushing for the pandemic aid package to include $1,600 direct payments, took to Twitter to urge GOP leaders to quickly pass the bill that would provide $2,000 payments.
[Perdue, Loeffler call for $2,000 checks]
“Working Americans have borne the brunt of this pandemic. They’ve been hammered, through no fault of their own. They deserve $2000 in #covid relief — a fraction of what the banks & big business got. Let’s vote now,” Hawley wrote.
NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. stocks edged lower on Tuesday in choppy trading after hitting record highs, as investors worried about the path of economic reopening and whether the Senate would authorize additional pandemic aid checks. Modest gains in early trading brought stocks to an intraday record, but the advance evaporated after U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked immediate consideration of the measure calling for an increase in stimulus payments from $600 to $2,000. Final passage of the proposal would require 60 votes and the backing of a dozen Republicans. McConnell said the chamber would address the increased payments this week along with limits on big technology companies and election integrity. McConnell’s comment comes a day after Democratic-led House of Representatives approved the move to bump up direct payments. “The move by Majority Leader McConnell to not endorse the $2,000 disbursements turned equity markets from green to red around midday,” said Joseph Sroka, chief investment officer at NovaPoint in Atlanta. “The plan that was originally signed is baked in. The question as to whether the bigger individual checks get passed is up for debate.” The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 68.3 points, or 0.22%, to 30,335.67, the S&P 500 lost 8.32 points, or 0.22%, to 3,727.04 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 49.20 points, or 0.38%, to 12,850.22. Volumes are expected to be light in the holiday-shortened week, which could lead to boost volatility. The S&P 500 is up 15.4% so far this year, with just two trading days left in 2020. Wall Street’s three main indexes opened at new highs for a second straight session after Trump signed a $2.3 trillion fiscal bill that restored jobless benefits and averted a federal government shutdown. More than 2 million Americans have been inoculated, helping investors look past a surge in infections that topped 19 million, with California, a major U.S. virus hot spot, likely to extend strict stay-at-home orders. But a sharp drop in small cap stocks could mark concern surrounding the surge in infections causing a slower than hoped for reopening, according to Stephen Massocca, senior vice president at Wedbush Securities in San Francisco. The Russell 2000 small cap index was off 1.85% on the day, its biggest one-day percentage decline in a month. Unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus measures, along with positive vaccine developments have helped the S&P 500 bounce back from a virus-fueled crash in March. The benchmark index is up more than 10% for the quarter as investors have flocked to economically-sensitive stocks from the so called ‘stay-at-home’ plays on hopes of a recovery. Intel Corp jumped 4.93% after Reuters reported activist hedge fund Third Point LLC is pushing the chipmaker to explore strategic options, including whether it should remain an integrated device manufacturer. [nL1N2J9139] After rising as much as 2.6%, Boeing shares gave back earlier gains to close up 0.07% as its 737 MAX plane resumed passenger flights in the United States for the first time after a 20-month safety ban was lifted last month. Snapchat owner Snap Inc climbed 6.15% after Goldman Sachs raised its price target on the stock on upbeat revenue growth prospects. Volume on U.S. exchanges was 9.46 billion shares, compared with the 11.14 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days. Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.70-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.57-to-1 ratio favored decliners. The S&P 500 posted 21 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 83 new highs and 27 new lows
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked an attempt by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to unanimously approve a House-passed bill to increase direct payments in the coronavirus relief package to $2,000 from $600.
President Trump has pushed for larger stimulus checks after threatening to veto the year-end coronavirus relief and government funding legislation.
Republicans including Georgia Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who are running in crucial Jan. 5 runoffs that will determine control of the Senate, have expressed support for bigger checks.
The Kentucky Republican faces pressure to act after the House — with nearly all Democrats and a few dozen Republicans on board — voted Monday to boost the cash deposits to $2,000 from $600. Now, Senate Republicans wary of spending more on pandemic aid have to decide how to handle a vote on a bill backed by President Donald Trump and Democrats as they try to hold on to their majority. McConnell brought the chamber back this week with one major goal: overriding Trump’s veto of the annual National Defense Authorization Act. He has not yet committed to bringing the $2,000 payment bill up for a vote, and it is unclear now how one would take shape. Still, Democrats tried to use the limited tools at their disposal to force a vote. Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, McConnell said he planned to set up a Wednesday vote on the veto override. He outlined three priorities Trump said he wanted Congress to address when he signed the coronavirus relief and government spending bill into law Sunday: larger direct payments, Section 230 legal liability protections for internet platforms and unfounded concerns about widespread election fraud. Without detailing any specific plans, he said that “this week, the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.” Schumer then called for the Senate to vote on both the defense bill veto override and the $2,000 payments and “let the chips fall where they may.” When he asked for unanimous consent to increase the size of the checks, McConnell objected. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., then requested a vote on the larger payments after the NDAA vote Wednesday. McConnell again objected. Then, Sanders followed through on his threat to delay consideration of the veto override by objecting to a Wednesday vote. As the Senate needs unanimous support to move quickly on most issues, any one senator can grind activity to a halt if they choose. If the full chamber considers the stimulus check legislation, all 48 Democrats and independents who caucus with them would likely vote for it. It would then need support from 12 of the chamber’s 52 Republicans. The Treasury Department has said the $600 payments will start going out as soon as this week. If Congress approves the increase to $2,000, it will then be added to the original sum. As some GOP senators opposed the $900 billion in spending in the latest relief package, they may not support adding $463 billion — the Joint Committee on Taxation’s cost estimate for increasing the checks to $2,000 — to the price tag. However, several Republicans such as Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue of Georgia have signaled they will support the $2,000 payments. Sen. .Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who called for $1,200 checks earlier in the negotiating process, might also vote for the increase to $2,000. If it decides against holding a vote on the bill, the GOP would have to defy the man who controls the Republican Party: Trump. He has repeatedly pushed for $2,000 payments since he threatened to veto the aid bill last week. He said he wanted larger direct payments along with less foreign aid funding in the $1.4 trillion government funding package passed in tandem with the relief proposal. Trump relented and signed the legislation into law Sunday night, approving the pandemic aid and preventing a government shutdown. In a tweet Tuesday morning, the president called for “$2,000 for our great people, not $600!” Votes in the House on Monday show the GOP may have become more comfortable bucking Trump. Only 44 Republicans supported the $2,000 check legislation, while 130 GOP representatives voted against it. Republicans also joined Democrats in easily overriding Trump’s veto of the defense bill.
Sanders’ move to keep the Senate in Washington through the week could also hamper Loeffler and Perdue, the Georgia Republicans campaigning in crucial Jan. 5 runoff elections. If Democrats win both races — in which they have hammered the GOP senators for their response to the coronavirus — they will flip control of the Senate.
The Democrats running in those contests, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have called the GOP senators’ coronavirus response inadequate and pushed them to support $2,000 payments. In Fox News interviews Tuesday, Loeffler and Perdue suggested they would back the larger checks. “I’ve stood by the president 100% of the time. I’m proud to do that and I’ve said absolutely, we need to get relief to Americans now. And I will support that,” Loeffler said when asked if she would vote for the bill. On Twitter later, she fully endorsed the $2,000 payments. Perdue told Fox he is “delighted to support the president” in his push for $2,000 deposits. Both had previously resisted efforts to send higher direct payments as part of the stimulus package. The effort to boost the size of direct payments comes amid widespread concern about whether the rescue package went far enough to help Americans struggling to pay for housing and food. Congress failed for months to renew pandemic-era financial lifelines that expired over the summer as millions started to spiral into poverty. Before he agreed to the $900 billion package, McConnell had pushed for about $500 billion in new spending. Democrats, meanwhile, called for at least $2.2 trillion in aid. The compromise package the parties eventually reached includes $600 direct payments, half of what Congress passed in March as part of the CARES Act. It also adds a $300 federal unemployment insurance supplement, half of the enhanced payment Congress approved in March. The $600 weekly supplement for jobless Americans expired in July after lawmakers failed to renew it. The new package includes $284 billion in forgivable Paycheck Protection Program loans. It also extends a federal eviction moratorium through Jan. 31 and creates a $25 billion rental assistance fund. The bill puts more than $8 billion into Covid-19 vaccine distribution and more than $20 billion into providing it to Americans for free.It also includes $82 billion in education funding and $45 billion for transportation. It left out any aid for state and local governments struggling as the pandemic drags on.
(CNN)The House of Representatives on Monday passed a measure to increase stimulus checks for Americans under a certain income level to $2,000 after President Donald Trump championed the effort, sending the bill to the Senate where its future is less certain. The legislation, which passed with a 275-134 vote, comes a day after Trump signed a sweeping coronavirus relief bill into law Sunday evening. That measure, which was negotiated on a bipartisan basis, provides for $600 in direct payments, but after a deal was brokered and passed out of Congress, Trump railed against the amount as too low and called for $2,000 checks instead, prompting House Democrats to push for an increase. Democrats have seized on Trump’s 11th-hour complaint over the direct payments in a bid to push congressional Republicans to accept a higher amount, forcing GOP lawmakers to decide whether or not to defy the President after many have argued that the overall cost for a stimulus package should not rise too high.
When and if the Senate will consider the measure is uncertain. The Senate Democratic leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, announced Monday that he planned to try and quickly pass the measure in the GOP-led chamber through requesting a unanimous consent agreement, which can be blocked by any senators who opposes it.
“This week on the Senate floor Mitch McConnell wants to vote to override Trump’s veto of the $740 billion defense funding bill and then head home for the New Year. I’m going to object until we get a vote on legislation to provide a $2,000 direct payment to the working class,” Sanders tweeted. House Republicans blocked an effort by Democrats to advance $2,000 checks last week, but the House tried again on Monday with a floor vote that required a two-thirds majority to pass since it is taking place under a suspension of the rules, a threshold that means it needed a wide margin of bipartisan support to be approved. “The President must immediately call on congressional Republicans to end their obstruction and to join him and Democrats in support of our stand-alone legislation to increase direct payment checks to $2,000, which will be brought to the Floor tomorrow,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Sunday evening after Trump signed the stimulus legislation.
“Every Republican vote against this bill is a vote to deny the financial hardship that families face and to deny the American people the relief they need,” Pelosi said.
The President’s last-minute objections to the stimulus legislation initially threw into question whether he would sign it at all. When Trump finally did sign the legislation Sunday evening, he signaled in a statement that he signed the coronavirus relief bill only after securing a commitment for the Senate to consider legislation to increase stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, did not reference that commitment in his own statement Sunday night praising the President for signing the relief bill. Now that the bill has passed House of Representatives, it will put McConnell in a tough position of having to decide whether to bring the provision to the floor in the Senate as a standalone bill.
While the President has been urging Republicans to up the payments, many Republicans in McConnell’s ranks have made it clear they don’t think an increase is warranted given how much it would increase the price tag of the stimulus bill. A vote on the checks would likely divide the GOP conference and force some members to endure Trump’s ire in his final days in office.
Eligibility for the checks is determined by a person’s most recent tax returns. Anyone who made under $75,000 as an individual or $150,000 as a couple would receive the full amount. The amount individuals receive decreases by $5 for every $100 a person makes over $75,000. In short, that means that individuals who make over $99,000 would not be eligible nor would couples making more than $198,000. “Following the strong bipartisan vote in the House, tomorrow I will move to pass the legislation in the Senate to quickly deliver Americans with $2,000 emergency checks,” Schumer said in a statement. “Every Senate Democrat is for this much-needed increase in emergency financial relief, which can be approved tomorrow if no Republican blocks it — there is no good reason for Senate Republicans to stand in the way.” And Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, has threatened to delay a crucial vote to override Trump’s veto on a defense funding bill unless the Senate holds a vote on $2,000 checks.
