CORONA STIMULUS ON LIFE SUPPORT
No progress in Congress as election pressure rises
Congress is coming back — but don’t expect much progress on the stalled coronavirus stimulus deal.
President Trump and Democrats remain miles apart on talks for a deal, which collapsed in acrimony last month.
If anything, the chances of an agreement are slimmer than ever as Election Day nears, with little incentive for either side to back down and risk giving their opponents a potential political win.
Democrats already passed a $3 trillion-plus package months ago that includes a new round of the popular direct payments to taxpayers, back-to-school funding and aid to hard-hit cities and states like New York.
The White House countered with a far more modest $1 trillion package. Democrats offered to split the difference, but the GOP rejected that proposal out of hand.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he would introduce
some version of the Trump plan Tuesday when lawmakers return to Capitol Hill.
The goal of that move would be to corner Democrats into backing popular measures that leaders of both parties agree on. But the plan is complicated by the opposition of a significant chunk of GOP lawmakers to any major new stimulus spending.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wasted no time in declaring that effort dead on arrival.
“Republicans appear dead set on another bill which doesn’t come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere,” the powerful Democratic leaders said in a joint statement Tuesday.
Pelosi and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows appear to have a toxic personal relationship, offering little hope for progress.
The House speaker contemptuously recently referred to Meadows as “whatever his name is,” and says no major progress is possible until Trump and McConnell get personally involved in the talks.
Trump improbably asserted that he is “taking the high road” by leaving the talks to underlings.
“I’m taking the high road by not seeing them,” Trump said.
The deadlock has made it unlikely that Americans will get another round of $1,200 direct payments delivered under Trump’s name. There’s also little hope for a restoration of more generous unemployment benefits to those who’ve lost their jobs because of the pandemic, updates to a popular business subsidy program and money to help schools reopen and states and local governments avoid layoffs.
Some Democrats believe
Trump is making a huge poliitical miscalculation by failing to pour cash into the eeconomy in the weeks before he faces the verdict of voters on Election Day. Republicans hope that the recent tenuous immprovements in the economy, including a dip in the unemployment rate, will be enough to persuade voters to give four more years to the embattled president, even wwithout a new stimulus deal.
Looking for some good news? Hopes are much higher to avoid a government shutdown this fall.
Both sides have pledged to pass a so-called “clean” stopgap spending plan to keep the government operating through December. The bill would likely contain a bunch of lower-profile steps, such as an extension of the federal flood insurance program and a temporary reauthorization of spending from the highway trust fund.
The decision potentially means that both sides will forgo gamesmanship that uses the threat of a government shutdown to try to gain leverage, a move Americans perhaps,have become used to by now.