Thursday, Apr 02nd
Last update04:18:41 AM GMT
Congressional Glance
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced Thursday that a bipartisan House committee will investigate the federal response to coronavirus pandemic and ensure that congressional funding is spent wisely.
“The committee will be empowered to examine all aspects of the federal response to the coronavirus, and to assure that the taxpayer dollars are being wisely and efficiently spent to save lives, deliver relief and benefit our economy,” Pelosi said during a conference call with reporters.
The House passed a sweeping, $2 trillion coronavirus relief package that will provide immediate assistance to many Americans, small businesses and major industries on the brink of economic collapse amid the ongoing pandemic.
The package ultimately passed via a voice vote. But the vote followed a chaotic 24-hour scramble in which hundreds of lawmakers raced to return to Washington to block a single GOP lawmaker from holding up the bill.
President Donald Trump is expected to quickly sign the bill — the largest rescue package in U.S. history.
Negotiations on massive $1.6 trillion-plus emergency economic package to deal with the coronavirus crisis stalled on Sunday, with Senate Democrats objecting to the bill before a key procedural vote.
Democrats emerged from a closed-door lunch saying the emergency package had serious shortfalls and provided a "slush fund" to large corporations.
The opposition from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) presents a major hurdle before a bill is finalized. Pelosi told reporters that she plans to move forward with her own emergency package in the House.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is under fire amid revelations that she unloaded seven-figures worth of stocks after a private Senate briefing on the coronavirus outbreak.
Loeffler, who's running for reelection in a must-win state for Republicans, has forcefully denied any wrongdoing, calling the suggestion that she used insider information to guide her investments “baseless and false.”
She and her husband Richard Sprecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, have said that the trades were made by third-party investment managers without their knowledge.
Senator Richard M. Burr sold hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in major companies last month, as President Trump and others in his party were still playing down the threat presented by the coronavirus outbreak and before the stock market’s precipitous plunge.
The stocks were sold in mid-February, days after Mr. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote an opinion article for Fox News suggesting that the United States was “better prepared than ever before” to confront the virus. At least three other senators sold major stock holdings around the same time, disclosure records show.
Weeks before President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, Sen. Richard Burr privately offered a grim prognosis for the outbreak while previewing some of the massive disruptions soon to come, according to a previously unreported recording obtained by NPR.
In the recording, which NPR reports came from the North Carolina Republican's remarks at a private luncheon late last month, Burr said that the COVID-19 outbreak "is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic," which killed an estimated 50 million worldwide.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell introduced the text of the Republicans’ trillion-dollar proposal for the so-called “Phase 3” coronavirus stimulus package, paving the way for negotiations with Democrats to formally begin.
The centerpiece of the Senate Republican proposal — crafted with support from the White House — is a direct payment to qualified Americans of up to $1,200. Married couples could get $2,400. Taxpayers who earn more than $75,000 annually will begin to see that payment reduced by $5 for every $100 they earn over the $75,000 threshold, with those who make more than $99,000 getting nothing. Families with children would get $500 per child.
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