Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) warned during her interview with CNBC that the Senate Republicans could be putting in "poison pills" in the coronavirus relief bill, just days after her Democratic caucus rolled out their version that was filled with "poison pills."
The House's bill, which was over 1,400 pages long, included many provisions that was not related to the ongoing Wuhan coronavirus outbreaks in the United States, such as unprecedented collective bargaining powers for unions, increased fuel emissions standards for airlines, and expansion of wind and solar tax credits.
Despite having many poison pills in her bill, Pelosi warned about Republicans wanting to make an "ideological statement" with the bill they had worked on with their Democratic counterparts.
"I have three options. They can — we can come to a conclusion that sticks, not that they change it come to an agreement where it is all compromise, A. B, that — then we have unanimous consent, and this can move quickly if we don’t have unanimous consent, my two options with my members is to call them back to vote to amend this bill or to pass our own bill and go to conference with that the easiest way to do it is for us to put aside some of our concerns for another day and get this done," Pelosi said. "But we can’t — you can — you can support a bill because — if it doesn’t do enough that you want to do, but that’s what you can get, but if it has poison pills in it — and they know certain things are poison pills, they don’t want unanimous consent. They just want an ideological statement."
Early Wednesday morning, the Senate was able to finalize their relief bill after Senate Democrats blocked the cloture vote on Sunday after Pelosi torpedoed efforts when she came back from vacation. The upper chamber will vote on passing the bill later on Wednesday.
To add insult to injury, Pelosi signaled the House will not vote on the relief package on Wednesday after it passes.
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