Bipartisan group strikes deal on coronavirus relief package

WASHINGTON -- The group of Senate and House lawmakers negotiating a $908 billion COVID-19 relief package has reached agreement on business liability waivers and state and local government aid provisions, but those will be broken into a separate bill, according to a source familiar with the plan.

The larger $748 billion piece includes unemployment insurance, small-business relief, money for education, vaccine distribution and more, plus the separate bill with $160 billion for state and local governments and the liability protections.

The bifurcated approach gives congressional leaders options as they try to assemble a massive year-end legislative package including a $1.4 trillion collection of a dozen fiscal 2021 appropriations bills. Other items still in play include legislation aimed at cracking down on surprise medical bills modeled on a bipartisan agreement reached Friday, and renewal of expiring tax breaks and health care programs.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is still pressing for state and local relief in any final coronavirus relief package, however.

Pelosi “believes, at a time when the virus is surging, that the need for state and local funding is even more important, especially given the states’ responsibility for distributing and administering the vaccine,” her spokesman Drew Hammill tweeted Sunday night.

In a 30-minute call with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday afternoon, Pelosi also “reiterated her view that a compromise on the liability issue should be found that does not jeopardize workers’ safety.”

Pelosi and Mnuchin also discussed the surprise billing compromise, which the White House supports, and its roughly $16 billion in savings they want to use to pay for health care extenders. Hammill said the two plan to speak again on Monday.

Last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell and other top Republicans suggested dropping the state and local relief funding they oppose in exchange for dropping the business liability protections Democrats have fought. Democratic leaders initially blasted that offer as insufficient, but with time running short there were signs Mcconnell’s approach might be back on the table.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-MD., said earlier Sunday on CNN’S “Inside Politics” that he’d been speaking with congressional leaders from both parties over the weekend and the goal was to “get the essential done.”

Democrats “are not going to get everything we want. We think state and local [aid] is important. And if we can get that we want to get it,” Hoyer told CNN. “But we want to get aid out to the people who are really, really struggling and are at grave risk.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-louisiana, one of the lead Republicans working on the bipartisan plan, said “we’re the only bipartisan game in town” but that final decisions were up to the leadership.

“We’re going to introduce a bill tomorrow night. Now the leadership can discard it. I can’t govern that. I can only do that which is before me,” Cassidy said Sunday on CNN’S “State of the Union.”