Sen. John Thune (R., S.D.) ripped Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) Monday for interfering and derailing a Senate vote on an emergency coronavirus stimulus package.
"Yesterday, the speaker of the House showed up with an agenda, and all of a sudden it got taken over at the leadership level," Thune said on the Senate floor. "Now, instead of talking about helping workers, we're talking about the Green New Deal and all kinds of other things, demands that the unions and other special interest groups want to see in this deal."
"Everything was going really quite well, there were a lot of working groups that were meeting. There was great bipartisan cooperation. Both sides were getting ideas included in a plan," Thune also said.
He went on to rip Democrats for demagoguing the bill as a "bailout for big corporations."
Thune pointed to its provisions for direct payments to workers and families to help alleviate the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic. He also said the bill expands unemployment benefits to help workers who are or will be laid off.
Pelosi said she planned on pushing her own stimulus bill Sunday shortly before the Senate took a vote on its proposed plan. Senate Democrats defeated the package on a procedural vote.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) said the coronavirus pandemic presented an opportunity "to restructure things to fit our vision" late last week.