Bipartisan Group Of Senators Push Back On Joe Biden’s Plan To Give Money To ‘Wealthy Americans’: Report

 

A group of bipartisan Senators reportedly pushed back on the Biden administration on Sunday, informing the White House that it was providing too much money “to high-income Americans.”

“The 75-minute call, set up by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), is one of the first big calls the Biden administration has held as it works to build cross-party support for the $1.9 trillion plan. Senators asked for more data on how the White House filled out its plan,” Politico reported. “The senators told the White House officials they support spending more on vaccine distribution but some balked at the stimulus payments, urging the White House to make them targeted toward those in greater need, according to sources on the call. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) pressed the Biden officials on why families making $300,000 would be eligible and urged a focus on lower-income workers.”“I was the first to raise that issue, but there seemed to be a lot of agreement … that those payments need to be more targeted,” Collins said in an interview with Politico. Politico noted that the senators “objected to stimulus payments to wealthy Americans.” Collins said that it was not clear how the Biden administration came up with the $1.9 trillion that it was requesting.

Even Sen. Angus King (I-ME) had issues with the amount of money that Biden was trying to get passed, saying, “This isn’t monopoly money.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said that “the more targeted the assistance can be where it’s needed most, the more helpful.”

The meeting comes after Biden said late last week that urgent action was needed “because there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”

Giving stimulus money to high-income Americans is the same reason that former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) shot down a proposal for $2,000 stimulus checks late last year, a proposal that originally started as a demand from President Donald Trump.

“But above and beyond that discussion, the Democratic leaders have broken from what President Trump proposed. They quietly changed his proposal in an attempt to let wealthy households suck up even more money,” McConnell said. “Speaker Pelosi structured her bill so that a family of four would have to earn more than $300,000 in order not to qualify for more cash. A family of three could pull in $250,000 per year — a quarter of a million dollars — and still qualify for some money. And Democratic leaders want to call this scheme, quote, ‘survival checks.’ Only my friends Speaker Pelosi and the Democratic Leader could look at households in New York and California who make $300,000… in households where nobody has been laid off… where earnings did not even drop this past year… and conclude these rich constituents of theirs need ‘survival checks’ financed by taxpayer dollars and borrowed money.

Axios said the call on Sunday that included a group of 16 Senators—dubbed the “Sweet 16″—also discussed other issues including vaccine distribution and pandemic data.

“If you were just listening on the call, I don’t think you would have been able to tell who were the Republicans and who were Democrats and who were independents,” King added.



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