All five U.S. House members from central Pennsylvania voted Monday in favor of a speedy bill that would increase second-round stimulus payments to most Americans from $ 600 to $ 2,000.
The measure came to life in the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives last week after President Donald J. Trump criticized the size of the new stimulus checks as too small.
Forty-four Republicans on Monday joined the vast majority of Democrats in approving the bill by a vote of 275 to 134 – carefully removing the two-thirds threshold required to pass under swift consideration . But the fate of the Republican-controlled Senate is far less certain.
All members of the delegation in the middle state voted against the larger checks on Monday.
Many of them, such as U.S. Representative Scott Perry, R-York County, and U.S. Representative Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster County, have said on record that they think the general problem stimulation control is an extravagant overreaction to the pandemic. , and that relief should be directed to those individuals and families who have experienced actual loss or loss of income due to the recession.
The $ 2,000 stimulus check would cost an additional $ 464 billion over the $ 900 billion package passed by Congress before Christmas and signed by Trump on Sunday, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Congressional Republicans tried to keep the total price of the new stimulus package below $ 1 trillion, but that was before Trump launched his Twitter-fueled campaign last week to increase stimulus payments.
Democrats say they like the bigger payments because they think they – along with an expansion of the improved unemployment checks – will have a bigger impact in helping the economy withstand the latest boom in the pandemic.
In other Washington news on Monday, the middle-class delegation found that it was divided on a 322-87 vote to override Trump’s veto of the 2021 defense spending bill.
Reps Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster County, and John Joyce, R-Blair County, conveyed their views on Monday and voted to uphold Trump’s veto after originally passing the defense bill.
Joyce said in a statement after the vote Monday that he had voted with Trump on the veto out of respect for the president’s calls to make the bill “even stronger for our men and women in uniform.”
But Trump’s opposition to the defense action has focused primarily on the inclusion of language that would hit the names of Confederate generals from a range of military installations, and because it does not contain the language that protects accountability for tech companies like Facebook and Twitter. recall about content that third parties place on their platforms.
Rep. Fred Keller, R-Snyder County, and Dan Meuser, R-Luzerne County, voted for the original bill and in favor of the dominance Monday, while Perry opposed the initial bill and supported the president’s veto.
The veto dominance is also now going to the Senate for final disposal.