Hello from the House chamber. Here this morning for this pro forma session: Dem Reps. Steny Hoyer, Filemon Vela, Don Beyer, Debbie Dingell, ... GOP Rep. Rob Wittman. Will update here as this gets going.
The chamber is quiet. Mostly empty chamber. In the chair: Debbie Dingell.
The chaplain acknowledges in his prayer that a deal has been reached but further complications “have been introduced.”
The house is dealing with random announcements, including the clerk reading the veto message on the NDAA.
Hoyer asks for consideration of the $2,000 check bill. Dingell says the “chair is constrained” by rules that do not allow consideration of bills under UC without the minority leaders consent.
Wittman now asks for consideration of the gop bill. Dingell says the same.
House adjourns now until 2p Monday.
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i put this in Playbook this AM — coming out shortly — but worth noting here
TRUMP has Hill Republicans in a horrible bind and they’re getting blamed for the relief/funding impasse
San Diego Union-Tribune: “FEDERAL STIMULUS MEASURE REMAINS IN LIMBO: Republicans in House block effort to advance $2,000 relief checks” … Hartford Courant: “GOP says no to $2K checks” … Tampa Bay Times: “$2K checks tie down stimulus”
… Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Relief bill’s fate remains up in the air: In U.S. House, calls for $2,000 checks, changes to foreign aid both fail” … Chicago Tribune: “House GOP says no to $2K checks: Virus relief remains stuck in limbo with shutdown looming” …
G’morning from the Capitol, where we’re about to have a pro forma session in both chambers during which nothing will get done. This begins at 9
In the meantime, here’s what we said in Playbook this morning.
Headline: "Cyclone of uncertainty and chaos"
WITH 27 DAYS LEFT IN HIS PRESIDENCY, and the nation on the doorstep of Christmas, DONALD JOHN TRUMP has sucked Americans into a violent cyclone of uncertainty and chaos.
HE IS PARDONING CRIMINALS at a breakneck clip. Last night it was MANAFORT, who was in prison on tax charges, R STONE and CHARLES KUSHNER, IVANKA's father in law. Earlier this week crooked politicians and other unseemly actors. @BenSasse called the pardons “rotten to the core.”
OK — so Playbook PM is about to come out. And i regret to inform you that no one has a damn clue what the president is up to.
Not Republicans. Not much of his White House. no one.
Some people say Trump is in burn it down mode. Some people say he isn’t going to veto this package.
Who cares, frankly. No one knows what he is doing or what goal he’s driving toward.
Maybe he comes out today en route to FL and says he was kidding about the veto thing -- but maybe not, and he’s not running a corner store, he’s running the world’s most important country in the middle of a pandemic, so we can’t work with maybes.
We are in the beginnings of a full-blown legislative crisis. It's two days before Christmas. Congress is home. We're in a pandemic. Unemployment insurance runs out on Saturday. Govt shuts down Monday. And the president is suggesting he'll blow up a bipartisan bill to avert this.
I laid out some of these thoughts in Playbook this morning, but I have further thoughts now.
Ppl counting on @realDonaldTrump backing down. Maybe. He is completely detached from the legislative process, & has no relationships w principals. So it's tough to know what he thinks
Irony of this whole thing is @realDonaldTrump could've gotten $2,000 stimulus checks if he was even remotely involved in this process. He wasn't even an observer. @senatemajldr fought just to get @stevenmnuchin1 in the room
OK — this is a thread about the Electoral College process on Capitol Hill. I put it in Playbook PM. Tomorrow is my last edition of Playbook PM.
IN CASE YOU FORGOT, to launch a challenge to a state’s Electoral College’s results, a member of the House and a member of the Senate need to sign on. This has happened three times in the last 20 years: 2001, 2005 and 2017 -- all by Democrats.
IN OTHER WORDS, THIS ISN’T A ONCE-IN-A-CENTURY procedure -- it’s relatively common, but it never works.
TRUMP is throwing an awful lot of weight behind 2 efforts that, if you’re charitable, you can say he is not certain to win, but if you’re realistic, you can definitively declare he is likely to lose in a publicly humiliating fashion.
FIRST, TRUMP says he is going to veto the National Defense Authorization Act -- which has passed every year for 59 years.