Senate Republicans’ failure to coalesce behind a $500 billion coronavirus relief package would jeopardize the party’s three-seat majority in fall elections even as the fate of the legislation appears unlikely to harm President Trump’s bid for a second term.
The Senate was scheduled to vote Thursday on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s slimmed-down alternative to the $1 trillion proposal that died in late July after roughly half of the chamber’s 53 Republicans rejected the measure, complaining it was too costly. Democrats are expected to filibuster this revised GOP bill, blocking passage. If Republicans respond by failing, yet again, to unify behind coronavirus relief, their hold on the majority would grow even more precarious.
But a cohesive vote to move forward with the package could ease political pressure on vulnerable Senate Republicans embroiled in tough reelection battles back home while giving the party broadly an opportunity to turn the tables on the Democrats and blame the Senate minority for stonewalling pandemic relief. McConnell expressed optimism that Republicans would get a chance to prove this theory.
“Part of the problem with a divided Republican approach is that it masks the true intentions of congressional Democrats in this latest negotiation,” said GOP strategist Josh Holmes, the majority leader’s former chief of staff. “To the extent you’re an open-minded person who believes the country needs more relief, I don’t think there can be doubt about whose intent it is to provide it.”
The coronavirus is a major weak point for Trump as he enters the homestretch of his reelection bid against Democratic nominee Joe Biden. In the RealClearPolitics polling average, voter approval of the president’s management of the pandemic sits at just 41.5%.
But Republican insiders do not expect Trump to suffer politically if another round of coronavirus aid becomes a victim of partisan gridlock in the Senate. Some Republicans point to the encouraging August jobs report, with 1.4 million new hires, and an unemployment rate plunging below 10%. Others say the inside-baseball fight over coronavirus legislation and Senate procedure — the package is subject to a 60-vote threshold for passage, rather than just a simple majority — is simply too abstract to compete with the major issues shaping voters’ attitudes amid a highly competitive presidential campaign.
“The Trump momentum is being driven by factors beyond the inner workings of the Senate,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican operative in Pennsylvania, where Trump has lately cut Biden’s lead in the polls. “It may help, but only at the margins.”
Trump worked with both parties in Congress to enact trillions of dollars in pandemic relief in the spring, as the coronavirus spread across the United States. But as the Democrats, Republicans, and the White House debated further aid packages, that unity broke down. House Democrats passed their own bill in May, what Speaker Nancy Pelosi called an opening offer as negotiations over the next round of assistance commenced.
But Trump and Senate Republicans said the $3 trillion package was bloated and filled with a grab bag of irrelevant, liberal priorities.
Republican congressional aides say Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer were content to play hardball in the talks over the summer because Trump’s reelection prospects were sinking, as were those of as many as seven GOP senators up for reelection on Nov. 3. With Trump and Senate Republicans running more competitive post-Labor Day, GOP aides say Democrats might feel more pressure to play ball.
During a press conference on Wednesday, Schumer suggested otherwise. The New Yorker told reporters that McConnell’s trimmed coronavirus assistance legislation was designed to provide Republicans with an excuse for getting nothing done and that it was insufficient for the economic and health-related challenges posed by the ongoing pandemic.
“Leader McConnell isn’t searching for bipartisan progress,” Schumer said. “He’s looking for political cover. What we have now is a stripped-down bill cobbled together, not as a serious legislative response, but as a check-the-box vote for vulnerable Republicans, so they can pretend like they did something. It’s not going to work.”
