House and Senate leaders Sunday are on the brink of a deal on a coronavirus relief package after weekend talks on several sticking points.
The negotiations have helped bring agreement on much of a $900 billion package, including an accord on language restricting the Federal Reserve’s future lending capacity.
Sen. Pat Toomey, a Pennsylvania Republican, said he’s negotiated language that ends special federal lending authority created under an earlier virus aid bill and “stops these facilities from being restarted; and forbids them from being duplicated without congressional approval.”
“This agreement will preserve Fed independence and prevent Democrats from hijacking these programs for political and social policy purposes,” Toomey said in a statement Sunday.
Lawmakers said they expect to resolve several less significant loose ends today.
“We have apparently been able to solve the issues,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who had been involved in the talks on Saturday, told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning.
The Senate convenes Sunday at 1 p.m.
A top GOP leader, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, told Fox News Sunday he anticipated Congress would pass the coronavirus aid package this weekend.
Lawmakers plan to bundle the legislation with 2021 spending, which is up against a deadline. Congress passed a stopgap government funding bill on Friday that expires Sunday at midnight.
The coronavirus aid package would provide a $900 billion round of federal aid for businesses, schools, day cares, and healthcare, as well as additional money for rental assistance and food stamps.
The bulk of the measure’s spending, more than $300 billion, is directed to new loans for small businesses that are coping with more economic lockdowns amid a sharp rise in coronavirus cases across the nation.
A Toomey’s provision limiting the Fed became a tough, last-minute sticking point. Republicans largely agreed with Toomey that Congress needed to ensure special Fed borrowing language in an earlier virus aid package did not extend into the new year.
Democrats refused to back down on their objections to restricting the central bank and accused the GOP of attempting to limit the incoming Biden administration.
“The Republicans have put this last-minute provision to try to strip from the Fed the power it needs to be able to act in an emergency,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Saturday. “That’s something we just can’t go along with.”
Republicans said they simply wanted to tighten up the original lending language passed earlier this year.
“The issue revolves around the ability of the Fed to provide various emergency relief, and the concern on our part as Republicans is not to have that facility used for political purposes but instead to be preserved for true emergencies,” Romney said Saturday.
[Read more: Lawmakers battle over state and local aid in coronavirus bill]
Democrats said “compromise language is being finalized” with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, regarding the Fed lending language.
“After going back and forth all day with Leader Schumer, Sen. Toomey has agreed to drop the broad language in his proposal that would have prevented the Fed Chair from establishing similar facilities in the future to the ones created in March,” a senior Democratic aide said. “Now that this obstacle has been cleared, a final agreement on an emergency relief package is significantly closer.”
Leadership in both parties have pledged to keep Congress in session until lawmakers reach a deal and pass a new aid package.
“We need to conclude our talks, draft legislation, and land this plane,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said Saturday.
