$900 Billion Stimulus Update: Computer Issues Prevent Bill From Being Uploaded

Congress may be in the midst of coming together on a $900 billion stimulus package, but issues are already preventing the bill from being uploaded. As journalist Jake Sherman noted on Twitter, Congress was unable to upload their bill to the internet on Monday afternoon, inevitably causing a delay in the legislative process. Sherman said that several sources told him that the issues were being caused by computer bugs and a corrupted file in the education piece of the bill. The journalist shared that all of the sections need to be combined into one file in order for it to be accurately uploaded.

Of course, since Congress ran into problems while uploading the bill, Sherman noted that it could have posed a great problem as lawmakers would have been unable to read the bill before voting on it. However, at around 2 p.m. ET, Sherman wrote on Twitter that the bill would be going live. He then outlined the rest of the events that could lead to the bill being passed, as he shared that the Rules Committee will meet at 2:45 p.m. ET in order to debate and put out a rule. The Rule will then get a floor vote, which will then prompt a debate on the package. While there have been plenty of delays in the formation of this package (not to mention the months of failed stimulus negotiations between Democrats and Republicans), it seems as though the two sides have finally come together on a package. Although, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said in an address on Sunday that the blame for those very delays lies with the Republicans.

On Sunday, Pelosi said that the Republicans’ unwillingness to “crush the virus” caused the delay in enacting a second stimulus package (it has been nearly nine months since the first and, so far, only stimulus package, the CARES Act, was passed). “What took so long is because we could not get our Republican colleagues to crush the virus,” she said, as per CNN. “I couldn’t understand it – why would they not want to invest in the science that has told us so importantly that it require testing, tracing, treatment, separation, sanitation, and the rest.”

Pelosi then addressed the Democrats’ HEROES Act, which did not make any further headway in Congress after being passed by the House in May. She said about that initial package and a smaller revision that was passed by House Democrats, “[Republicans] said we just made a light touch on your language on testing. No, 53% of it to take out everything that referred to minority communities. Communities of color were so hard-hit in all of this, and now we see why.”