A top Senate Republican is backing President Trump’s call for Congress to fatten Americans’ coronavirus stimulus checks, calling it a “reasonable demand.”
“I hope Congress is listening,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) tweeted Friday night, after spending part of Christmas with the president at Trump’s West Palm Beach, Fla., golf club.
“I am convinced he is more determined than ever to increase stimulus payments to $2000 per person,” Graham added.
Trump has been lobbying Republicans this week in the wake of his last-minute rejection of the $900 billion aid package Congress passed Monday after months of delay.
His sharp criticism of the $600 relief checks that Americans would receive under the plan threw legislators into an uproar as he left the measure, included with a $1.4 trillion government appropriation bill, unsigned.
The House is set to vote on stand-alone legislation that will boost the stimulus checks to $2,000 — but several Senate Republicans have signaled resistance to that idea.
“It took us a long time to get to where we are,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Thursday. “I think reopening that bill would be a mistake.”
But Trump has continued to push, again slamming “the measly $600 that is now in the bill” in a Saturday tweet.
Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler — who is locked in a tight Jan. 5 runoff race — said Wednesday that she too would consider Trump’s demand for a bigger stimulus “if it repurposes wasteful spending.”