Roll Call: GOP campaign arm hits Democrats over what was kept out of the pandemic relief package
House Democrats and the Biden Administration said Republicans would have ample opportunity to engage in this COVID package to make it a bipartisan bill.
Well, Republicans tried, and House Democrats blocked all but TWO of the nearly 200 amendments Republicans tried making to the bill.
Democrats blocked amendments on saving energy jobs, expanding rural broadband, and even specific funding for opening schools and vaccinating teachers.
This proves Democrats don’t want a win for the American people and will continue putting partisan politics before Americans in need.
In case you missed it…
GOP campaign arm hits Democrats over what was kept out of the pandemic relief package
Stephanie Akin
Roll Call
February 16, 2021
House Republicans are preparing to attack Democrats for a flurry of votes taken in a handful of committees over the past week as they rushed to send a $1.9 billion COVID package to President Joe Biden’s desk by mid-March.
The first strike comes in an email from the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House Republicans’ campaign arm, shared with CQ Roll Call before it was blasted to other media Tuesday.
The missive calls out Democrats for a “completely partisan” process that involved rejecting all but two out of 200 Republican-proposed amendments as House committees prepared parts of a package that will be stitched together before a final vote on the House floor next week.
It then lists 15 specific proposals Democrats rejected on “energy jobs, reopening schools and transparency in government,” previewing issues Republicans plan to highlight as they seek to regain the House majority in 2022.
“The NRCC will ensure vulnerable Democrats have to answer for their votes preventing schools from opening, killing oil and gas jobs and whatever socialist agenda item they come up with next,” NRCC spokesman Michael McAdams said.
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But Republicans have taken issue with the decision to move the package under reconciliation rules, and some of the amendments that were rejected could put Democrats in battleground districts on the defensive.
Some of the GOP amendments focused on highly partisan issues unlikely to be accepted on the left, such as resuming construction of the wall on the Mexican border or reauthorizing construction of the Keystone Pipeline, which Biden took steps to halt in some of his first executive actions.
Another measure defeated on a party-line vote would have prioritized vaccines for citizens over undocumented residents. Democrats argued that would slow down the process of acquiring herd immunity.
Democrats have indicated that they agree with the ideas behind some Republican amendments — like setting aside money for health care providers — but wanted to address them in a bipartisan way in the coming months.
Other amendments that Republicans offered were for policies that generally have bipartisan support, such as reopening schools and increasing vaccinations, but Democrats said their proposal already addressed many of the concerns Republicans brought up.
Read the full article in Roll Call.