- Senate blocks $2,000 stimulus checks for now
- Turnout is running at a record for all-important Georgia Senate seat run-off elections
- U.S. pending home sales expected to remain strong
Senate blocks $2,000 stimulus checks for now — Senate Majority Leader McConnell on Tuesday blocked an attempt by the Senate Democrats to force an up-or-down vote on the bill passed by the House on Monday that would boost the stimulus checks to $2,000 from $600.
Despite his move, Mr. McConnell said Tuesday on the Senate floor, “This week the Senate will begin a process to bring these three priorities into focus.” He was referring to President Trump’s demand for $2,000 stimulus checks, a repeal of the liability shield for tech companies, and an investigation in Mr. Trump’s allegation of massive voter fraud. Mr. McConnell apparently made some sort of promise to Mr. Trump to consider those issues if Mr. Trump would sign the pandemic and omnibus spending bills, which he did on Sunday night.
Mr. McConnell did not provide any details on what a “process to bring these priorities into focus” means. That could involve a vote on a bill that includes all three of those items, or it could simply be a referral of the issue to a committee for consideration, which would likely be a death sentence.
In any case, the odds of the Senate approving $2,000 stimulus checks are very low, considering that most Senate Republicans are opposed to such checks. Also, a package including all three of those measures would be opposed by Democrats and wouldn’t be able to get the two-thirds procedural cloture vote that would be needed to move the bill to the Senate floor for an up-or-down majority vote.
An increase in the stimulus checks to $2,000 would cost another $435 billion, adding to the national debt and adding to the $164 billion cost of the $600 checks, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Mr. McConnell allowed the pandemic aid bill to rise to $900 billion from his previous ceiling of $500 billion. However, it seems unlikely that he would allow the effective cost of the pandemic bill to rise by another $435 billion to $1.335 trillion, regardless of President Trump’s demands.
Mr. McConnell’s legislative maneuvering mainly seems to be an attempt to bury the $2,000 stimulus check idea with the least amount of attention and criticism from President Trump.
Meanwhile, Mr. McConnell on Tuesday indicated that he has the two-thirds votes in the Senate that are necessary to overcome Mr. Trump’s veto of the $741 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). That Act provides discretionary spending to the Defense Department. The House on Monday already overcame Mr. Trump’s veto with a vote of 275-134.
The Senate could vote on the NDAA as soon as today. However, a delay in that vote seems more likely, possibly until Sunday, because Senator Bernie Sanders is forcing a delay in the bill in an attempt to force a vote on $2,000 stimulus checks.
Turnout is running at a record for all-important Georgia Senate seat run-off elections — Georgia voters are clearly aware of the stakes for next Tuesday’s (Jan 5) run-off elections since early-voting turnout is running at record highs. More than 2.3 million people have already voted in the election between in-person early voting (1.5 million) and mail-in ballots (over 800,000), according to the U.S. Elections Projects. The early voting accounts for 58% of the 4.0 million people that voted in the November 3 election.
In an interesting development, more than 79,000 people have already voted early who didn’t vote at all in the November 3 election. That suggests that the election is drawing people off the sidelines to vote due to the high stakes of the election.
The races are too close to call since the polls are so tight and are within the margin of error. The latest poll-of-polls data from FiveThirtyEight shows that Republican Perdue is slightly ahead of Democrat Ossoff by 48.0-47.6%, respectively. However, in the other race, Democrat Warnock is ahead of Republican Loefler by 48.2%-47.7%.
The betting odds at PredictIt.org, for whatever they are worth, remain little changed at 69% for Republican control of the Senate and 35% for Democratic control.
If Democrats win both of those Senate seats, then the Senate would be split evenly at 50-50, and Democrats would have control via the tie-breaking vote by Vice President-Elect Harris. In that case, Democrats would be able to approve at least some of their blue-wave agenda, depending on the status of the Senate filibuster.
U.S. pending home sales expected to remain strong — The consensus is for today’s Nov pending home sales to be unchanged m/m and +21.0% y/y, following October’s report of -1.1% m/m and +19.5% y/y. The pending home sales report is a leading indicator for the existing home sales series since pending home sales contracts generally lead to closed home sales on a 1-2 month basis.
U.S. existing home sales in October rose to a 15-year high of 6.86 million units and fell back just slightly in November to 6.69 million. Home sales fell back partly because there are so few homes on the market to buy. The supply of existing homes available for sale fell to a record low of 2.2 months in November. Demand for single-family homes continues to be strong as people move out of multi-family units or buy bigger homes so they can work from home and school children at home.