McConnell again blocks Senate vote on Trump plan for $2,000 stimulus checks

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his allies in the Senate blocked a last-ditch effort Friday to stage a vote on President Trump’s demand to provide everyday Americans $2,000 in additional COVID-19 relief while an unusual bipartisan bloc of Democrats and Republicans decried the failure to vote.

McConnell reiterated his opposition to the additional checks on a rare New Year’s Day session of the Senate, calling the plan a "universal cash giveaway" that amounts to “socialism for rich people."

GOP Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, objected to the request for the votes, on behalf of an absent Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Penn., as did Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., all but dooming a vote before the current Congress expires.

An unusual bipartisan bloc of senators pressed for the vote that included Vermont Socialist Bernie Sanders and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on the left and Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley on the right.

Hawley said failing to allow a vote on a measure that easily passed the House amounted to “the Senate versus the United States of America.” Schumer predicted everyday Americans would conclude that the “Republican majority has prevented them from getting the checks.”

But Thune said the problem with the current bill was that it provided too wide a swath of America to get the payments, including six-figure earners, and that it made it fiscally irresponsible.

"It is not targeted to help those who are most in need," he argued.