Rep. Ocasio-Cortez is not happy with the Senate stimulus plan and she is threatening to hold up the passage of the bill.
While she cannot stop it, she can scuttle easy passage and call for an in-person vote. As most members of the House have left town – they are off for a few weeks – they would have to travel back to DC to cast their vote.
This scenario could take longer than we think as the airline industry has been essentially grounded.
Enter Lindsey Graham to remind everyone of what is at stake.
“There is no good reason left to deny the American people the relief they need,” Sen. Graham said.
“Every restaurant and bar in South Carolina is closed. As long as you can’t congregate with 10 people or more, the entire economy is shut down. So, people need a paycheck.”
“They need to have burdens taken off them; their student loan payments deferred. There are so many good things in this bill, there’s $2 trillion. It is very generous,” he continued.
“And what’s holding this bill up is special-interest politics, and if in the next 48 hours we do not pass this bill, everybody in the country should cut off our pay.”
“I’m all for trying to jump-start the economy and turn it back on where it makes sense,” he said, “but what is happening in New York could come to South Carolina or any other place if we really don’t watch it here.”
“We are at war with this virus — I want to starve it, I want to bomb it, and I want to kill it,” Sen. Graham said. “You starve it by having social distancing, you bomb it by having therapies that will make it less lethal, and you kill it with a vaccine.”
CNN also reported that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the high-profile freshman from New York, is leaving open the option of forcing House members to return to Washington to cast a vote on the $2 trillion stimulus package barreling through Congress.
The New York Democrat has expressed her frustration with the stimulus deal, suggesting it’s too tilted towards corporations. The deal was reached between senators from both parties — including the senior Democratic senator from her state, Chuck Schumer, and the White House.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez told CNN she is not ruling out asking for a recorded vote, which would force lawmakers to return to Washington and vote in-person, something that most members of Congress are eager to avoid amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Ocasio-Cortez said she hadn’t seen the final bill text yet, “but I’m open” to asking for a recorded vote “if necessary.”
