Senate GOP to propose relief bills today
Series of bills would include payments, $70B for schools
WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans and the Trump administration expect to unveil their COVID-19 relief plan Thursday after reaching agreement on key pieces late Wednesday.
That package will no longer be one bill but a series of bills addressing the ongoing health care and economic crisis, according to Sen. Roy Blunt, RMo.
“I think what the leader has decided he wants to do is to have a handful of bills now instead of just one bill,” he said. “The goal is tomorrow to get all of those bills out there.”
Blunt said he didn’t know whether the bills would eventually be packaged together for floor consideration.
Blunt, who oversees annual health care and education appropriations, met with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Appropriations Chairman Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., to iron out details late Wednesday.
Mnuchin said Republicans had agreed to another round of direct checks to Americans but declined to give specifics. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has said he wants those checks to be directed toward lower-income Americans earning less than $40,000 annually. The previous round of $1,200 direct tax rebates that Congress approved in March began to phase out at $75,000.
The legislation will include $70 billion for elementary and secondary education with half of that figure going to every school on a per capita basis and the remaining $35 billion going to schools that will open in some capacity for in-person instruction, according to Blunt.
“We’ll come up with language that allows the governors to determine what that means and language that also
is clear to school districts and school boards for what they would have to do to be considered in a back-toschool environment,” Blunt said.
Another $30 billion would be appropriated for higher education, with no conditions placed on colleges and universities based on whether they plan to reopen this fall. And $5 billion would be flexible funds that could be used, for example, for private school vouchers.
Blunt also said the bill would set aside a total of $25 billion for virus testing, including $9 billion in earlier funding that hasn’t yet been spent.
Meadows wouldn’t say if the group reached agreement on a way to avoid millions of Americans losing the entire $600 weekly unemployment insurance increase that’s set to expire at the end of July.
He did say that he’s unlikely to support a temporary extension, which had been a topic of discussion earlier in the day as a fallback in case lawmakers couldn’t reach a broader deal before leaving for August recess.
“Any short-term extensions would defy the history of Congress, which would indicate that it would just be met with another shortterm extension,” Meadows said.
House Democrats’ bill, which that chamber passed in May, would extend the $600 extra weekly benefit through next January. Republicans are basically united against extending that higher level. But several GOP lawmakers said Wednesday they want to avoid millions of Americans losing the entire increase above state benefits that Congress approved in March.
One possibility floated was a temporary extension, perhaps at a lesser amount, while states are given time to ramp up a new pandemic unemployment relief system that would calculate benefits for individuals that don’t exceed what they were earning previously.
“I think it would be probably smart for us to allow the states to come up with a system that’s fair and works better,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio. “And that would probably be a percentage of the state benefit. But it’s going to take a couple months for states to get up to speed on that. Probably a two-month period.”