Top Trump administration officials said Thursday night they are on the cusp of abandoning efforts to craft a bipartisan coronavirus aid package unless Democrats take significant steps toward a compromise by Friday.
“We are not going to just keep on coming back every day if we can’t get to a deal,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said after a nearly three-hour meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Schumer and Pelosi are in discussions right now on whether it’s worth coming back.”
Pelosi called the meeting “consequential” but said it “reinforced” that Republicans and the White House “don’t understand the gravity of the situation.”
The two sides are trillions of dollars apart on a deal. Democrats are seeking a broad $3.4 trillion aid package, while Republicans are aiming for a package worth roughly $1 trillion. Democrats have been negotiating with Trump officials for nearly two weeks, without much advancement toward a compromise.
Pelosi, a California Democrat, called the GOP proposal “anorexic,” adding, “we’re very far apart. It’s most unfortunate.”
Mnuchin and Meadows said if there is no significant advancement toward a deal by Friday, the president would take executive action. President Trump is eager to extend federal unemployment insurance, which expired last month and is wrapped into the larger aid package. Trump is also eager to cut payroll taxes and take other actions aimed at helping the country cope with the extended consequences of the coronavirus outbreak.
“The president wants us to get a deal, or he wants to move on, and he’ll take other actions,” Mnuchin said.
The meeting became heated, Pelosi reported afterward, claiming Meadows slammed his hand on the table at one point. Meadows later denied Pelosi’s claim.
Schumer said Republicans rejected a compromise offered by Democrats.
“Their stance was disappointing,” Schumer said. “We asked them, would you meet us in the middle, and they said, ‘No, it has to be mostly in our direction.’”
Schumer’s account differs starkly from that of Mnuchin and Meadows, who told reporters it was their side that made more concessions in an effort to get a deal.
“We put out a proposal that we think is a very fair compromise,” Mnuchin said.
The two sides are far apart on whether to provide $1 trillion to bail out state, local, and tribal governments. Mnuchin said the administration is not interested in providing the money, which Republicans have argued would be used in some cases to bail out mismanaged pension systems. State governments have yet to spend much of the aid provided in earlier coronavirus aid packages, the GOP pointed out.
“The president is not going to do a deal that has a massive amount of money to bail out state and locals,” Mnuchin said. “The president is prepared to do something for state and locals that deals with the issue of additional coronavirus expenses, deals with making sure that the first responders the hospitals, the police, the firemen all have proper funding. And the school teachers.”
Schumer said he wants to continue negotiating and is hoping Meadows and Mnuchin will return for talks Friday. Schumer warned Trump’s move to act unilaterally may not work.
“It will be litigated in court and will be difficult and awkward to implement,” Schumer said. “We plead with them, continue to negotiate, and realize you have to do this in a truly bipartisan way. We want to sit down tomorrow. They are going to think about it, but we urged them to come back.”
