At an almost scheduled news conference at his Golf Club Bedminster, New Jersey, Friday night, President Donald Trump outlined the executive actions, which he said he would pursue if Congress did not reach a deal.
No additional talks are scheduled after nearly two weeks of daily meetings, and White House Leaders Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said they recommend Trump move forward with a series of executive orders.
Trump said Friday that the actions would include a reduction in payroll taxes, expanding unemployment benefits, extending an eviction moratorium and postponing student loan payments and forgetting their importance.
“If Democrats hold these critical relief hostages, I will act under my authority as president to give Americans the relief they need,” Trump said.
The president said the executive orders could be signed “at the end of the week.” A White House official confirmed to CNN that Trump was not expected to sign executive orders Friday on Covid’s relief.
“They are currently being signed by the lawyers,” Trump said.
Trump said “they are talking about” postponing the tax service until the end of the year. “And I can extend it for a certain period … and it will be retroactive until July 1,” he said. “I will improve the end of the year for unemployment benefits,” he added, without giving any amount.
But the executive orders are expected to meet strong opposition from Democrats who plan to challenge them in court. Democrats warn that action taken will not be enough to address the scale of the economic and public health crisis facing Americans during the pandemic.
The lack of progress Friday followed a well-known pattern for negotiators who, despite some 20 hours of meetings, have difficulty agreeing on the extent of the problem at hand. Now, Democrats and Republicans will have to make their arguments to an American public that demands more relief just three months from an election.
“If you have an opportunity like this to do something for the American people, then it’s an opportunity, but we can not have a missed opportunity to do that by arranging for something so low, the needs of the American people, “said spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi.
For weeks, Democrats have argued that they have the upper hand in a negotiation where Republican rank and file are divided over whether another incentive is even needed, but the White House said Friday that it would prefer to move forward with more targeted executive action than more moving in the direction of the Democrats on a topline number.
“We’re going to take executive orders to try to alleviate some of the pain that people are experiencing,” said Meadows, who is Trump’s chief of staff. “This is not a perfect answer. We will be the first to say that, but it is all we can do and all the president can do within the bounds of his executive power and we will encourage him to do it.”
Earlier Friday, the Trump administration rejected a Democratic offer to vote in a $ 2 trillion incentive price match with Mnuchin calling it “a non-starter.”
“I do not know that this is a reduction, as much as she just changed the time frames. I do not think she came down with her number, other than just made a shorter time,” Meadows added, referring to Pelosi.
Pelosi and Schumer suggested they would not be open to a number lower than $ 2 trillion, arguing that such a plan would not succeed in winning over a sufficient number of Democrats in both chambers.
“The House of Representatives does not have the votes to go south of $ 2 trillion, the Senate Democrats cannot go south of $ 2 trillion, so that is what compromise is all about,” Schumer said. “Because there are 20 Republicans who do not want to vote that does not mean the whole thing has to move in their direction. You have to come together in the middle.”
Meanwhile, the GOP leaders of the House of Representatives did not think that anything above $ 2 trillion could pass the Senate.
In a private conversation with GOP senators earlier in the day on Friday, Mnuchin and Meadows said they believed Democrats’ demands for nearly $ 1 trillion for state and local government had become the biggest sticking point over a deal, told multiple sources CNN.
They also claimed that Democrats had not moved their positions or proposed things that the GOP could accept. For example, officials said, Democrats pressed for forgiveness of permanent student loans as part of the deal.
Democrats have argued that passing on nothing less than a large-scale package is a non-starter and have backed down from the idea of passing everything on secret, while Republicans have accused them of keeping moving toward passing a smaller package that would dealing with problems of common ground.
As the chances of a deal get slimmer and slimmer, finger-pointing on both sides is intensifying.
“My frustration is that we may have passed a very meager deal that dealt with some of the most pressing issues,” Meadows said Thursday night.
Schumer was critical of Meadows on Friday, calling him “uncompromising.”
“His positions are very tough and uncompromising, more so than Mnuchin,” Schumer of Meadows said when asked if the White House chief of staff was negotiating in good faith.
This story was updated Friday with additional developments.
CNN’s Kristin Wilson, Maegan Vazquez, Nikki Carvajal and Jim Acosta contributed to this report.
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