Senate barrels toward showdown vote on disaster relief
Posted Mar 31, 2019 10:08 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
WASHINGTON — A fight between President Donald Trump and Democrats over hurricane relief for Puerto Rico is putting in peril a widely backed bill for disaster aid for several states.
The amount of money in dispute is relatively small, but Trump feels antipathy toward the U.S. territory’s government. Senate Republicans are taking a hard line in denying Democratic demands for more aid for Puerto Rico, which was devastated by back-to-back hurricanes in 2017.
Democrats are threatening to block the GOP bill in a showdown Senate vote on Monday afternoon. What would happen next is unclear, but top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York appears confident that a successful filibuster won’t kill the bill outright, but instead drive Republicans toward compromise.
Andrew Taylor, The Associated Press
