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In another part of the same interview, she called the $600 per person stimulus Trump signed into law on Sunday as part of the coronavirus relief package a “belated” and “poor” investment in American families. “Six-hundred dollars will not help most families survive, and we need two U.S. Senators who are willing to go to Washington and be in partnership with the new president to deliver real covid relief to the state of Georgia,” Abrams said. She listed the 4.1 million job loss claims in the state and the quarter of small businesses open a year ago that have shut down permanently this year as proof that Georgians need real relief. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been silent on whether he plans to support House Democrats ‘ effort to make $2,000 direct payments to Americans—a ditched demand of Trump’s— a reality, but the Kentucky Republican thanked the president for signing the recent stimulus bill. It prevented a federal moratorium banning evictions from expiring and putting at risk housing for some 160,000 Georgians facing eviction. Abrams reminded legislators that the lives of those spared from eviction in the short run won’t “suddenly get better” because of the extended moratorium.
McConnell “has shown his obstructionism many times before” and Georgia Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have been “his strongest supporters, making certain that no progress happens and no relief comes to Georgia,” Abrams said. “We need real relief,” she added. “And that means we need Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, who will go to D.C. not to enrich themselves as Perdue and Loeffler have but who will do their best to ensure that Georgia families get the real relief they need.”
More than 2 million Georgians have already voted in the state runoff, and the state’s most populous county, Fulton, has mailed 182,000 absentee ballots and gotten 82,686 back, Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chairman Robb Pitts told Channel 2 Action News. “When we first talked, I thought we were probably looking at a 50 percent turnout, it may be a little higher now, based upon what we are seeing,” he told the local news station.
Abrams has been an important part of expanding and diversifying the state’s electorate, having founded the voting rights organization Fair Fight and working with the New Georgia Project nonprofit to register an estimated 800,000 new voters, mostly people of color and young people often overlooked in the state. Still, she said in an MSNBC interview Monday the runoff is far from a sure win for Democrats. “I think it’s going to be a very narrow decision,” the Georgia Democrat said. Heading into the third week of early voting, 1.3 million people have voted in person and about 700,000 absentee ballots have already been returned throughout the state, Abrams said. “We are doing the hard work of reaching voters who did not participate in the November elections,” she said. “Sixty-five-thousand Georgians who did not vote in November are voting in this election, and we know that they are disproportionately between the ages of 18 and 29, and they’re disproportionately people of color.”
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Let’s give GOP Leader Mitch McConnell the boot! Give $4 right now so McConnell can suffer the next six years in the minority.
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