Dems seek aid for Black Americans in virus bill
WASHINGTON – As Senate Republicans prepare to roll out their next COVID-19 aid bill, the top Democrat said Thursday that he wants to shift $350 billion from an untapped Treasury Department virus relief program to help Black Americans and other people of color during the pandemic and beyond.
Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York said moving some of the $500 billion previously approved for Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would make immediate and long-term changes to address systemic racism.
“Long before the pandemic, long before this recession, long before this year’s protests, structural inequalities have persisted in health care and housing, the economy and education,” Schumer said in a statement. “COVID-19 has only magnified these injustices.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is poised to release the GOP’s $1 trillion package as soon as next week. That plan is a counteroffer to the sweeping $3 trillion proposal that House Democrats approved in May.
It’s been months since McConnell hit “pause” on new spending, as he puts it, and Republicans now face a potentially more dire situation. They had hoped the pandemic would ease and the economy would recover. Instead, coronavirus cases are spiking, states are resuming shutdowns and parents are wondering if it’s safe to send children back to school.
“There were some that hoped this would go away sooner than it has,” McConnell said Wednesday during a hospital visit in Kentucky, where he urged people to wear masks and social distance.
“The straight talk here that everyone needs to understand: This is not going away,” McConnell said.
This would be the fifth virus rescue bill since spring. Such an unprecedented federal intervention has occurred as Congress races to provide a national strategy to try to bring the pandemic under control.
McConnell is straining to keep costs down as Republicans revolt over deficit spending. Schumer’s proposal taps into efforts to shift money from other accounts to avoid fresh outlays.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s $3 trillion coronavirus aid bill, once dismissed by McConnell and others as a liberal wish list, now seems not as far-fetched.
Both the House and Senate have similar priorities: help schools reopen, provide unemployment benefits for jobless Americans and ramp up health care testing, treatments and a vaccine. But they differ broadly in size and scope.
House Democrats provided $100 billion for school reopenings in an education stabilization fund that Senate Democrats say could swell to $430 billion to include more money for child care, colleges and other needs. Senate Republicans are floating the idea of $50 billion to $75 billion in education funds; talks are ongoing.