A senior Republican in the Senate backs President Trump’s call to Congress to bolster Americans’ stimulus controls on the coronavirus, calling it a “reasonable demand.”
“I hope Congress is listening,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) tweeted Friday night, after spending part of Christmas with the President at West Palm Beach, Florida Golf Club.
“I am convinced that he is more committed than ever to increasing incentive payments to $ 2000 per person,” added Graham.
Trump is lobbying Republicans this week in response to his last-minute rejection of the $ 900 billion aid package that Congress passed on Monday after months of delay.
His harsh criticism of the $ 600 checks that Americans would receive under the plan upset lawmakers when he abandoned the measure, which was included in an unsigned government bill of $ 1.4 trillion.
The House will vote on standalone legislation that will raise stimulus vouchers to $ 2,000 – but several Senate Republicans have expressed opposition to that idea.
“It took us a long time to get to where we are today,” Senator Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) Said Thursday. “I think reopening that account would be a mistake.”
But Trump has kept pushing, again with “the measly $ 600 in the bill now” in one Saturday tweet.
Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler – stuck in a tight run-off race from Jan. 5 – said on Wednesday that she too would consider Trump’s demand for greater stimulus “if it is a re-use of wasteful spending.”