Rep. Davis remains “cautiously optimistic” about a second COVID relief bill

Posted on November 12, 2020
U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Taylorville). (Photo courtesy: WJBC/File)

By Blake Haas

BLOOMINGTON – Amid election uncertainty, one local congressman says he’s “cautiously optimistic” that Americans would receive a second COVID-19 stimulus check.

U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, who recently won reelection to the U.S. House in Illinois; 13th Congressional District, said the problem lies with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“That’s really up to Speaker Pelosi to call us back and actually have a plan. Her plan before was to say ‘I will do stand-alone measures like our Arline relief portion,” which is necessary. Our PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) portion, which she wasn’t high on doing. Then the next day, she would say, ‘well, no, we need a bigger package, and it needs to be three trillion-plus.’ If she’s serious about coming in and fixing problems like our small business owners are facing because of the new (Gov.) Pritzker lockdowns. We need to give them access to one-hundred billion-plus that is still sitting in an account unused in Washington.”

The Taylorville Republican told WJBC’s Scott Miller that small businesses could receive help quickly if the Speaker called the House of Representatives into a session and voted on the measure.

“I’m cautiously optimistic, but in the end, I think Speaker Pelosi is worried about becoming Speaker again more so than helping small businesses. She expected to have a huge margin of a Democrat majority even on election morning, and clearly, it didn’t work out for her. She’s likely to have one of the smallest majorities that she’s had and one of the smallest majorities ever in the U.S. House of Representatives. I think maybe she will have a five-seat majority, and when that happens, she’s probably a little more worried about counting votes to repaint her leadership position than she is about taking to (Treasury) Secretary Mnuchin about (a) COVID relief bill, unfortunately.”

President-elect Joe Biden could propose a second round of checks to Americans once sworn in; however, that is several months away.

Blake Haas can be reached at [email protected].

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