Democratic leaders maintained Thursday that the next coronavirus relief package must include a long-term extension of the federal unemployment benefits that have kept millions of jobless Americans afloat during the pandemic, holding firm against Republican threats to upend negotiations over the critical issue.
In a press conference on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said the latest round of talks Wednesday produced no results and that they remained at loggerheads with Republicans and the White House over the weekly $600 unemployment supplement that expired last month.
Pelosi, who’s leading the negotiations for the Dems, said Republicans keep proposing a piecemeal approach to extend the $600 boost for a few weeks as negotiations continue.
But Democrats won’t stand for it, she said.
“We’re not having a short-term extension,” said Pelosi, whose chamber passed a $3 trillion stimulus plan in May that would’ve extended the unemployment aid through next year.
Schumer pointed to studies that show the weekly $600 supplement has kept millions of workers out of poverty and noted that Democrats aren’t looking for a “band-aid.”
“We believe the patient needs a major operation while Republicans want to apply just a band-aid,” Schumer said. “We won’t let them just pass the band-aid, go home and leave America bleeding.”
As Democrats played hardball, Trump and the Republicans were getting antsy.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who does most of the talking for the Republicans in the closed-door negotiations, earlier this week said that his side will walk away from the table if a deal isn’t made by Friday.
With that deadline appearing likely to come and go without an agreement, Trump threatened Thursday to take the stimulus debacle into his own hands if Congress can’t get along.
“I’ve notified my staff to continue working on an Executive Order with respect to Payroll Tax Cut, Eviction Protections, Unemployment Extensions, and Student Loan Repayment Options,” Trump tweeted, listing off a number of provisions that he wants to be included in the stimulus plan.
It’s unclear if Trump can address the hot button issues via executive fiat, and the White House has not explained which authority would allow him to do so. Moreover, Trump’s long-craved payroll tax cut proposal has been dismissed by Republicans and Democrats alike.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who for nearly three months refused to consider the House-passed $3 trillion plan before unveiling a $1 trillion counterproposal last week — accused Schumer and Pelosi of being too rough.
“Day after day, they’ve stonewalled the president’s team,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Earlier in the day, McConnell huddled with Trump at the White House while Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who’s also representing Republicans in the talks, returned to Pelosi’s U.S. Capitol office for what promised to be another long round of negotiations.
Two Democratic sources close to the negotiations said McConnell and Meadows are to blame for the seemingly irresolvable impasse while Mnuchin appears more willing to compromise.
“Where Mnuchin works on behalf of Trump, it is ever clear that Meadows takes cues from McConnell. And McConnell wants no deal,” one of the sources said.
The continued congressional stumbling came as the Labor Department reported that more than 16 million American workers remain reliant on unemployment benefits.
The allocation that funded the $600 weekly boost ran out on July 31, so unemployed workers are now only getting whatever benefits that their states can provide, putting many of them in financially precarious situations even as the virus resurges across the country.
Beyond the unemployment benefits, Republicans and Democrats are having a hard time finding a middle ground on how much aid should be allocated for cash-strapped local governments in states like New York.
The White House has offered to provide $150 billion in state budgetary bailouts, but Democrats say that’s not enough.
Gov. Cuomo says New York alone will need about $30 billion to cover enormous budgetary gaps, including at the financially-floundering Metropolitan Transit Authority.
“If our congressional reps vote for something that does not include this funding, we’re going to have to take some very dramatic actions,” Cuomo told reporters on a conference call Thursday afternoon, hinting at mass layoffs. “I don’t have a printing press like the federal government does.”
Back on Capitol Hill, Democrats have made clear they’re not willing to give a thumbs up to a Republican proposal of $20 billion in aid to major agricultural producers unless they get a big trade-off on food stamp benefits.
The two sides are also feuding over how much cash to give the U.S. Postal Service, which will need to do a gargantuan job in delivering mail-in ballots during November’s election, and whether the popular small business-backing Paycheck Protection Program should receive another fill-up.
One of the few provisions Democrats, Republicans and the White House agree on is another round of $1,200 direct payments to U.S. taxpayers.
With Dave Goldiner