https://www.mediaite.com/election-2020/a-betrayal-georgia-voters-enraged-after-democrats-promise-of-2000-checks-becomes-1400-under-biden-stimulus-plan/Well, for one, there's Mediaite on how Georgia voters and organizers reacted to the clarification that the plan was always for the additional stimulus to be (for most people) $1,400, not $2,000. In one word: betrayed.
If enough people (and let's keep in mind, Warnock beat Loeffler by only 93,272 votes in the runoff, so "enough" in this context is "about a hundred thousand"--Ossoff's margin over Perdue was even tighter, at 54,944 votes, never mind Biden's over Trump!) perceive you to have promised one thing, even if you actually promised something else, especially if the first thing is better for them than the second (which, in this case, it is, $2,000 being more than $1,400), then if you only do the second, rather than the first, you're opening yourself up to losing the next election pretty hard. Holding all of Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Nevada (plus picking off some of Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) is a tall enough order already; being perceived to have broken a promise of $2,000 cheques only needlessly makes the task that much harder.
I also always understood the plan to be an additional $1,400 atop the $600 already approved. But I can also understand how, given Democratic messaging during the runoffs, a lot of people would think that the promise was for $2,000 on top of and separate from the $600, and given the close margins of victory, I think it's politically unwise for the Democrats to approve only $1,400, and not $2,000.
EDIT: There's another reason to introduce a clean bill (that is, with nothing else attached) for $2,000 cheques: a lot of Republicans have said they support that.
Unless reconciliation is used to push it through on a party-line vote in the Senate (and there are rules over what can go into a bill passed via reconciliation, and it's unlikely anything like that's going to get changed with Manchin and Sinema around), you need 60 votes to pass anything.
Putting extra stuff in such a bill would only give Republican Senators an excuse to vote against it.
With a clean bill, on the other hand, Schumer can just force every Republican in the Senate to say whether they're for or against giving $2,000 stimulus cheques to everyone. No excuses that there was something else they didn't like.
Marco Rubio, for instance,
has voiced support for $2,000 cheques. So if there's a vote purely on that subject, Sen. Rubio either votes in favour, which is good because it's a vote for a good policy, or he votes against, in which case the Democratic Party has a ready-made attack ad when he's up for re-election in 2022. (Of course, if he's hit with a primary challenge, so would his opponents there.)
And it's popular even among people who vote solidly Republican: Joe Manchin
was at first against $2,000 cheques, but then had to
backtrack on it after voter backlash in West Virginia.
There's really no reason for the Democratic Party, at this point,
not to bring a bill for $2,000 stimulus cheques to the floor of both the House and the Senate.
EDIT #2: With Biden reportedly meeting with a group of Republican Senators looking to support a plan that would further water down even the $1,400 proposal, I would like to post a few snippets from The Federalist Papers pointing out why supermajority requirements for ordinary legislation are bad.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed22.aspTo give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, from the nonattendance of a few States, have been frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode Island, has several times been able to oppose an entire bar to its operations. This is one of those refinements which, in practice, has an effect the reverse of what is expected from it in theory. The necessity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something approaching towards it, has been founded upon a supposition that it would contribute to security. But its real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of the government, and to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of its government, is of the greatest importance, there is commonly a necessity for action. The public business must, in some way or other, go forward. If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion of a majority, respecting the best mode of conducting it, the majority, in order that something may be done, must conform to the views of the minority; and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule that of the greater, and give a tone to the national proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual negotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is even happy when such compromises can take place: for upon some occasions things will not admit of accommodation; and then the measures of government must be injuriously suspended, or fatally defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of obtaining the concurrence of the necessary number of votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon anarchy.
It is not difficult to discover, that a principle of this kind gives greater scope to foreign corruption, as well as to domestic faction, than that which permits the sense of the majority to decide; though the contrary of this has been presumed. The mistake has proceeded from not attending with due care to the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing the progress of government at certain critical seasons. When the concurrence of a large number is required by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because nothing improper will be likely TO BE DONE, but we forget how much good may be prevented, and how much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they may happen to stand at particular periods.
Suppose, for instance, we were engaged in a war, in conjunction with one foreign nation, against another. Suppose the necessity of our situation demanded peace, and the interest or ambition of our ally led him to seek the prosecution of the war, with views that might justify us in making separate terms. In such a state of things, this ally of ours would evidently find it much easier, by his bribes and intrigues, to tie up the hands of government from making peace, where two thirds of all the votes were requisite to that object, than where a simple majority would suffice. In the first case, he would have to corrupt a smaller number; in the last, a greater number. Upon the same principle, it would be much easier for a foreign power with which we were at war to perplex our councils and embarrass our exertions. And, in a commercial view, we may be subjected to similar inconveniences. A nation, with which we might have a treaty of commerce, could with much greater facility prevent our forming a connection with her competitor in trade, though such a connection should be ever so beneficial to ourselves.
Evils of this description ought not to be regarded as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption. An hereditary monarch, though often disposed to sacrifice his subjects to his ambition, has so great a personal interest in the government and in the external glory of the nation, that it is not easy for a foreign power to give him an equivalent for what he would sacrifice by treachery to the state. The world has accordingly been witness to few examples of this species of royal prostitution, though there have been abundant specimens of every other kind.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed58.aspAs connected with the objection against the number of representatives, may properly be here noticed, that which has been suggested against the number made competent for legislative business. It has been said that more than a majority ought to have been required for a quorum; and in particular cases, if not in all, more than a majority of a quorum for a decision. That some advantages might have resulted from such a precaution, cannot be denied. It might have been an additional shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures. But these considerations are outweighed by the inconveniences in the opposite scale.
In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority. Were the defensive privilege limited to particular cases, an interested minority might take advantage of it to screen themselves from equitable sacrifices to the general weal, or, in particular emergencies, to extort unreasonable indulgences. Lastly, it would facilitate and foster the baneful practice of secessions; a practice which has shown itself even in States where a majority only is required; a practice subversive of all the principles of order and regular government; a practice which leads more directly to public convulsions, and the ruin of popular governments, than any other which has yet been displayed among us.
The people who wrote the US Constitution and its most ardent defence would kill the filibuster.
EDIT #3:
By electing Jon and the Reverend, you can make an immediate difference in your own lives, the lives of the people all across this country, because their election will put an end to the block in Washington on that two-thousand-dollar stimulus check, that money that will go out the door immediately to help people who are in real trouble.
More and more I can understand why people are pissed off that a) the cheques are planned to be $1,400, not $2,000 and b) the cheques have not yet gone out even though it's been a week and a half since Sens. Warnock and Ossoff were sworn in.
