Virus relief measure on shelf till after vote

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the White House would approve a big stimulus package after the election and predicted that Republicans will retake control of the House of Representatives.

“After the election, we’ll get the best stimulus package you’ve ever seen,” he said.

Congress left Washington on Monday until after the election without pass

ing any new economic or health care relief measures even as the coronavirus pandemic surges. Prospects for a stimulus deal remain in doubt, and negotiations have largely been shelved after repeated failed attempts to broker a compromise.

The realization that any new stimulus would almost certainly have to await the election contributed to the worst sell-off in U.S. stocks since early September on Monday.

Earlier on Tuesday, Trump blamed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for the lack of an agreement.

“Pelosi only looking to Bail Out badly run Democrat Cities,” he wrote on Twitter. “Tap, Tap, Taping us along. She has little interest in helping out the ‘people’.”

Talks faltered in part because the bipartisan urgency that the White House and Congress shared earlier this year evaporated over the summer as the November elections neared. Instead, the White House and Democratic leaders dug in during talks and never closed in on an agreement.

After days of partisan debate and a vote late Monday confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, senators are headed back home to campaign for reelection. The House has been out of session for weeks, although Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have continued to negotiate around a new $2 trillion relief bill.

After their latest call Monday, agreement remains pending on both the size — the Trump administration was last at $1.9 trillion, with the Democrats at $2.4 trillion — and language of a bill.

Their talks showed scant evidence of progress, but neither Pelosi nor Mnuchin seems to want to be the one to say it’s over. Pelosi continues to insist she wants a deal before the election that would include another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, among other things. But at the same time, her rhetoric has shifted in recent days to emphasize the possibility of a bigger and better relief bill passing in future, with retroactive benefits.

“The Democratic message to the American people is: ‘Help Is on the Way. It Will Be Safer, Bigger, Better and Retroactive,’” Pelosi wrote in a letter to House Democrats this week.

NEED FOR RELIEF

The inaction by Congress leaves the public without a lifeline, at a moment when covid cases and hospitalizations are on the rise in multiple midwestern states and elsewhere. An unprecedented $3 trillion stimulus that Congress approved in the spring has largely run its course, with unemployment benefits, aid to small businesses, support for the airline industry, rental assistance and other programs expiring.

Despite efforts at bipartisan talks, Congress has not acted since, despite pleas from economic leaders such as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that more help was needed to boost the nascent recovery.

“As the covid pandemic surges again, the American people desperately need additional relief to deal with the economic fallout, but Speaker Pelosi’s intransigence and the Trump administration’s ineptitude have combined to deny it to them, at least until after the election,” said Michael Steel, a GOP strategist who was a top aide to former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

In an interview on MSNBC late Monday, Pelosi pointed to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ comment over the weekend saying that “We are not going to control the pandemic.”

“This was big with Mark Meadows saying ‘We didn’t intend to control this.’ So, that gave us much more leverage, but the fact is we have to control the virus. We have to control the virus. But in addition to that, we cannot sell our souls,” Pelosi said. “I know, just say, ‘OK, well, let’s just do it, whatever way they want to do it. We’ll do it again.’ No. We’ve got to crush the virus.”

Senate Republicans under the leadership of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had little interest in the deal Pelosi and Mnuchin were negotiating.

McConnell has consistently criticized the Democrats for pushing what he considers a grab-bag spending package that includes non-coronavirus related items.

Throughout the Senate debate on Barrett’s nomination, Democrats bashed McConnell and Republicans for jamming through a Supreme Court nomination instead of passing new covid relief. But the complaints fell on deaf ears as Republicans blamed Pelosi for the failure to act.

“Well, we’ve been working on coronavirus relief. Unfortunately, the speaker has not been able to agree to anything remotely reasonable,” McConnell said on the Fox News Channel after the vote to confirm Barrett. “We can do two things at once. And we were trying to do two things at once. What we can do consistent with the Constitution, consistent with the fact there is a Republican president and a Republican Senate is confirm the vacancy to the Supreme Court.”

‘LAME DUCK’ SESSION

The next chance for action on covid relief will come when Congress returns to Washington for a “lame duck” session after the election, though each sides’ negotiating position could change depending on the electoral results.

“We’ll come back in November,” said Senate Appropriations Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala. “The question might be, will there be something then?”

The chances of a coronavirus relief bill before Nov. 3 are “very, very slim,” he added, referring to Election Day.

Even in the unlikely event Pelosi and Mnuchin could come to terms, writing a complex bill and pushing it through House and Senate procedures before Election Day would be an all but impossible task.

Chances for action in the lame duck are also uncertain. Congress will be facing a Dec. 11 deadline when government funding will expire, requiring passage of new spending legislation to avoid a government shutdown. It’s possible new relief legislation could pass then.

If not, the country will likely have to wait until February for the next possible bill.

South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the No. 2 Republican leader in that chamber, told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that if Democrats win on Nov. 3, they could opt to proceed with a smaller stimulus in the lame-duck session and come back with more early in the new year.

“If they don’t, and we are still in the majority, then I suspect there’s more interest in trying to get a deal,” Thune said. “There’s a whole range of things that we all agree on. And I don’t know why we can’t at least do that.”