Senate Republicans are struggling to unify around a coronavirus aid package that party leaders negotiated with the White House even as Trump officials have started talks with Democrats, who are likely to increase the size and scope of the legislation.
“It’s a mess,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley told the Washington Examiner after leaving a closed-door GOP meeting about the measure. “I’m not inclined to support it now. I can’t figure out what this bill was about. I can’t figure out what we were trying to accomplish with it.”
Hawley is among a group of Republicans who are wary of passing another massive coronavirus aid package in the face of a rapidly increasing national debt. Congress has already approved four prior coronavirus aid measures this year worth about $3 trillion. The plan Republicans unveiled Monday would cost roughly $1 trillion, which some Republicans say will almost certainly increase in order to win the support of Democrats, who control the House and are needed to pass anything in the GOP-led Senate.
“It won’t be $1 trillion,” Hawley said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters after the meeting that the 52 other Republicans in his conference “are all over the lot,” when it comes to providing a new round of aid, with “some members who think we have done enough and other members who think we need to do more.”
The Kentucky Republican said serious negotiations are now underway with Democrats, which will alter the final measure.
“This is a complicated problem,” McConnell said. “We’ve done the best we can to develop a consensus among the broadest number of Republican Senators, and that’s just the starting place. That’s where we begin in dealing with the other side and with the administration.”
Hawley is among several Republicans who have already publicly questioned the wisdom of passing a new round of aid. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul are not in favor of new spending.
But other Republicans position themselves somewhere in between.
South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said he’s wary of increasing the debt but argued the funding is needed to reopen businesses and schools and to provide new lawsuit liability protections, which are central elements of the GOP plan.
“It’s a matter of how many more dollars do we need?” Rounds said.
Rounds rejected Hawley’s characterization of the measure as “a mess” and said the GOP is not arguing about the bill.
“It’s a great discussion going on in there, in my opinion,” Rounds said. “We are going to be on the same wavelength when we are done. Not everybody, but the vast majority.”
Republicans spent part of the closed-door meeting discussing how to extend the federal expansion of unemployment benefits. The GOP proposal now on the table would provide unemployed workers about $200 extra per week, down from the $600 weekly payment that has been distributed since March.
Republicans agree the benefit should be less than $600 weekly in order to avoid paying most workers more than they make on the job.
But the GOP plan would require new modifications to antiquated state unemployment systems already struggling with distributing current unemployment benefits, which some Republican senators say will cause an unacceptable 2-month delay in getting benefits out to the unemployed.
“The proposal to use a complicated formula that would take 60 days to implement uses 60 precious days, and I don’t think many of our states can do it,” Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said as he left the meeting. “Many of our state’s departments of labor just got microwaves last week, much less be able to reprogram the computer in 60 days to effectuate a complicated formula.”
Democrats are touting the GOP divide to make the case that their plan should be the starting point in the discussions, not the GOP $1 trillion measure.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters he anticipates Democrats will win the spending battle because, unlike the GOP, their party is unified behind their own massive relief measure.
“If we stand strong, we have a realistic chance, a decent chance, that Republicans will move in our direction, and we’ll get much of what we want,” the New York Democrat said.
