The Senate leader all but ended any chance of increasing direct payments, despite some Republican support for the effort.
Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, effectively killed off any chance that Congress would increase stimulus checks to $2,000 before President Trump leaves office, saying there was “no realistic path” for the Senate to pass such a bill on its own. Mr. McConnell insisted on Wednesday that lawmakers would consider only a bill that wrapped the $2,000 checks in with two other issues that Mr. Trump has demanded Congress address: investigating the integrity of the 2020 election and revoking legal protections for social media platforms. Both of those are nonstarters for Democrats, dooming any chance that such a bill could pass. In his opening remarks, Mr. McConnell defiantly blamed Democrats for trying to hustle more money out the door. “The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help,” he said. That seemed to ignore the fact that Mr. Trump has been the one demanding lawmakers increase stimulus checks to $2,000 from $600 and criticizing his own party for not moving quickly to provide more money. “Unless Republicans have a death wish, and it is also the right thing to do, they must approve the $2000 payments ASAP. $600 IS NOT ENOUGH!” the president wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. With four days left in the legislative session, the hard-line stance effectively guarantees that Mr. Trump will not get any of his last-minute demands, despite growing calls from Republican lawmakers to put more money into Americans’ hands. For days, Mr. Trump held a bipartisan, $900 billion stimulus bill hostage, saying it did not provide big enough checks and refusing to sign it. He finally relented on Sunday and said he had secured a commitment from lawmakers to increase the payments and address two other issues that have drawn his ire: his loss in the 2020 election and legal protections for big technology companies like Facebook and Twitter that are provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. “The Senate will start the process for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230 and starts an investigation into voter fraud,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Sunday, repeating his unfounded claim of fraud in the 2020 election.
