House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the House of Representatives will move immediately on passing a pandemic spending package.
“We’re getting ready for a COVID relief package. We‘ll be working on that as we go,” she told reporters, referring to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that emerged in China in 2019. “We’ll be doing our ... committee work all next week so that we are completely ready to go to the floor when we come back.”
Pelosi’s comments suggest that the stimulus bill could be passed into law in early February. Another House session starts on the week of Feb. 1.
Last week, President Joe Biden unveiled a nearly $2 trillion spending measure including $1,400 stimulus payments, vaccine development programs, raise unemployment benefits, and others.
The legislation needs to clear the narrowly divided Senate before it reaches Biden’s desk for him to sign into law. Democrats on Wednesday secured a slim 50-50 majority in the upper chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris being the tie-breaker.
Some GOP senators, including Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), expressed skepticism about whether such a bill could be passed.
“We just passed a program with over $900 billion in it. I’m not looking for a new program in the immediate future,” he told reporters Wednesday.
Pelosi, in the news conference, did not say when the House will transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate.
She rejected calls from Republicans that impeachment would be a divisive move: “I don’t think it’s very unifying to say, ‘oh, let’s just forget it and move on.’ That’s not how you unify.”
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