Despite scrapping the start of the August recess, Senate lawmakers haven’t been able to revive negotiations on a new round of federal coronavirus aid and are instead using floor time for partisan criticism.
“This is not a both-sides-to-blame situation,” Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday. “Democrats are willing to compromise. Republicans are being intransigent and will not move from their position, which is totally inadequate for the needs of America at the greatest economic crisis we have had in 75 years and the greatest health crisis in 100 years.”
The New York Democrat has repeatedly claimed Democrats have offered a halfway compromise between the ever-increasing cost of their own proposal, now at $3.7 trillion, and the GOP’s $1 trillion proposal.
Republicans tell a different story.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that it is the Democrats who are refusing to budge from their costly proposal by insisting on including provisions unrelated to the coronavirus outbreak. Democrats want the legislation to eliminate the $10,000 cap on property tax deductions, for example. Democrats are also insisting on $1 trillion for state and local governments, which have not yet used more than one-quarter of the coronavirus aid passed earlier this year and would use the funding in part to bail out mismanaged state pension funds.
“Republicans wanted to reach an agreement everywhere we could and then continue to fight over the contested questions later,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said. “But the Democrats said no. Because they know their unrelated wish-list items would have no prayer of standing on their own merit. Only these hostage tactics could possibly get their bad ideas across the finish line. So struggling people have waited, and waited, and gotten nothing.”
McConnell said he held a conference call with lawmakers in his party on Tuesday, and Republicans agreed the two parties must work to reach a deal quickly despite President Trump’s unilateral move on Saturday to extend enhanced federal unemployment benefits and the moratorium on rental evictions and student loan payments. Trump also announced a payroll tax holiday.
Despite the apparent desire among lawmakers in both parties to find a deal that would also provide new money for testing, treatment, and vaccine development, funding for schools to reopen and an extension of a successful small business loan program, no meetings are scheduled for the two sides to discuss a path forward.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who had been leading the negotiations for Democrats on behalf of Trump, said on Monday that he’s spoken to some Democrats this week, but not Schumer or Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. Mnuchin told reporters last week that Republicans are not willing to accept a $2 trillion proposal but have raised their $1 trillion offer by an unspecified amount.
“I said any time they want to meet and they’re willing to negotiate and have a new proposal, we’re more than happy to meet,” Mnuchin said Monday.
For now, the two parties are hoping to steer the blame for the impasse away from themselves.
“Who is intransigent?” Schumer said to an empty Senate chamber. “Who is really saying my way or the highway? The answer is obvious.”
