The U.S. House took two important votes on Monday, approving a stand-alone bill to raise the COVID relief checks from $600 to $2,000 per person, and overriding President Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act.
Relief checks
After weeks of negotiation, Congress had passed a relief package that included the $600 checks, only to have President Trump threaten to veto the bill because he said the payments should have been larger, specifically calling for $2,000 checks. He did finally sign the bill on Sunday night, averting a number of dire consequences including a possible government shutdown.
Nevertheless, Democrats in the House, who had pushed for much larger checks during the negotiations, immediately put together a bill to raise the amount. Speaker Nancy Pelosi put it on the floor last week asking for unanimous consent, but the Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy blocked it.
So, Pelosi brought it back to the floor on Monday under regular rules, and it passed 275-134, with a number of Republicans joining the Democratic majority to give the bill the two-thirds threshold it needed.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell had to decide whether to take it up. If he does, he will force his Republican majority to either vote for a Democratic proposal, or vote against helping their constituents who need the help.
NDAA veto overrideveto
Congress approved the NDAA by a large bi-partisan margin, as has happened every year for decades. Trump then vetoed the bill as he had threatened to do. His arguments for the veto, though, shifted over time, from not wanting to rename military bases that were named for Confederate generals, to wanting the bill to include language harming social media companies.
Interestingly, one provision of the bill that has gotten little attention but could also figure into Trump’s veto is that the bill requires shell companies to name their primary members. As noted on Political Wire,
The NDAA includes a measure which makes it more difficult to use corporate shell companies to launder money by mandating the reporting of the owners of the company. The bill also increases penalties for money laundering and streamlines cooperation between banks and law enforcement, particularly those abroad. In short, the measure would effectively ban anonymous shell companies and severely weaken their use for illicit purposes.
The bill had passed both chambers with veto-proof majorities, and on Monday the House voted to override Trump’s veto by 322-87.
The Senate is expected to also override the veto easily, perhaps on Tuesday. However, Senator Bernie Sanders has threatened to delay the vote on the NDAA veto override unless the Senate first takes up the $2,000 check bill.
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