After weeks of stalled talks and an election around the corner, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is under increased pressure to compromise with Republicans on a new round of federal coronavirus aid.
The California Democrat sought to rally Democrats last week at a press event promoting the House HEROES Act, a $3 trillion coronavirus aid measure Democrats passed in May.
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Reporters asked Pelosi about cutting a deal with Republicans, who have rejected her starting negotiating point of $2.2 trillion, a number Pelosi views as a compromise.
“It’s hard to see how we can go any lower when you only have greater needs,” Pelosi said Thursday.
But she may have to lower the price.
Centrist House Democrats running in competitive swing districts are eager to strike a deal ahead of Nov. 3 and are pressuring Pelosi to compromise with the GOP.
Republicans, meanwhile, said they wouldn’t accept or even consider a bill as expensive as the one Pelosi is proposing.
“Clearly, we’re not going to spend $3.4 trillion or $2.4 trillion or $2.2 trillion, which are the various numbers that the speaker has laid out as potential,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said.
Weeks of stalled talks have left House Democratic centrists frustrated.
A group of 25 House Democrats and 25 House Republicans belonging to the House Problem Solvers Caucus last week unveiled a coronavirus aid proposal that would cost approximately $1.7 trillion, a much lower number than Pelosi’s plan but more than double the cost of the narrow package the Senate GOP passed earlier this month.
Centrists who co-authored the plan called on Pelosi to bring the Problem Solvers bill to the floor.
“I think we need to stop the political pingpong here,” Rep. Max Rose, a New York Democrat who supports the plan, told CNN.
The measure provides $500 billion for state and local aid, only half the amount Pelosi is seeking. But it is far more than the Senate GOP plan, which does not support any new funding for state and local governments.
Rose said the framework represented a real chance at producing a bipartisan compromise.
“And it is that framework which should be put on the House floor,” Rose said.
Pelosi has signaled her rejection of the Problem Solvers Caucus’s proposal and seems content to hold out for the $2 trillion plan.
“The fact is, we shouldn’t be going down because we have these needs,” Pelosi said.
The leaders of eight House committees said the proposal “falls short of what is needed to save lives and boost the economy” and that it “leaves too many needs unmet.”
But Democrats who wrote the proposal responded angrily at the immediate rejection of the plan by their leadership.
“What truly ‘falls short’ is doing nothing,” Rep. Kendra Horn, an Oklahoma Democrat who helped write the proposal, said on Twitter. “It is flatly unacceptable that congressional leadership is not at the table when businesses are closing, Americans are out of work, and families need help. The political games have to stop.”
Hoping to leverage Democratic discontent, members of the GOP’s House Freedom Caucus, a conservative faction, attempted unsuccessfully to pressure Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to introduce a resolution to remove Pelosi as speaker.
Democrats would have tabled the resolution, but some discontent centrists may have voted with the GOP.
“I know there are a few Democrats out there who are very upset with Nancy Pelosi,” McCarthy said.
