Senate Republicans are ready to present a $ 1 billion coronavirus aid proposal.
Republican Senate and White House leaders appear to have overcome their differences and are ready to present their next coronavirus relief plan on Monday afternoon.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows spent the weekend on Capitol Hill working on details of the proposal with Republican Senate leadership staff.
“We have an agreement in principle,” Meadows told reporters Sunday night, saying staff were still “putting the finishing touches” on the proposal. “We have some modifications where we are looking for clarity, but we’ve narrowed them down to a few that hopefully will be resolved in the next hour or so.”
The $ 1 trillion plan is expected to reduce the federal unemployment benefit to approximately $ 200 per week, on average, or 70% of the wages a worker earns before being laid off. It would also provide $ 105 billion for schools, $ 70 billion of which would go to K-12 institutions and more would go to schools that will reopen; would give $ 16 billion more for virus testing and tracking; would provide another round of popular stimulus controls; it would include a more specific second round of forgivable loans from the Small Business Paycheck Protection Program; and would provide tax credits to companies to help with rehire and reopening.
President Donald Trump had insisted on a payroll tax cut, which caused some delay, but after the speech met with opposition from many Republicans and Democrats alike, the proposal was rejected. Mnuchin acknowledged over the weekend that the tax incentive did not provide immediate relief, unlike the planned second round of direct payments to modest-income Americans. Similarly, the administration relented in an effort to zero any new funding for testing, tracing, and major federal health agencies involved in fighting the pandemic.
White House officials have shown a new sense of urgency after weeks behind schedule, with Meadows launching an unsystematic approach that could accelerate some benefits, such as those for the unemployed, who are about to expire, without addressing others, such as the moratorium on evictions that expired this weekend. But to date, the incremental approach has been rejected by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi.
“Honestly, I see that we can provide unemployment insurance; perhaps a retention credit to prevent people from being displaced or returned to the workplace; helping with our schools,” said Meadows. “If we can do that, along with liability protection, maybe we will propose it, pass it, and be able to negotiate the rest of the bill in the coming weeks.”
“For them to come now, when we’re on the brink,” Pelosi scoffed in a CBS interview, referring to the expiration of federal assistance, “we’ve been ready for two months and 10 days.” The House passed a $ 3 trillion coronavirus aid bill in May that included extra help for state and local governments, schools, and virus testing, but the Senate did not pick it up.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to present the Republican Party’s new proposal in a speech in the Senate room Monday afternoon, according to Meadows and Republican Party leadership aides, after which Negotiations with Democrats can start in earnest.
But the two sides remain far apart, and over the weekend, McConnell made it clear that a resolution will take time, including deadlines for unemployment benefits and a moratorium on expiring evictions.
“Hopefully in the next two to three weeks we can get together and come up with something we can send to the House and send it to the President for his signature,” McConnell said.
Pelosi did not rule out reducing the federal unemployment benefit, but was adamant that Congress cannot get out of its long August recess without a deal.
“We can’t go home without him,” Pelosi told CBS’s Face the Nation.
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