S900B IN HOPE FOR STIMULUS PACKAGE
Pols seen nearing deal for half the payout & jobless aid as 1st measure
Americans may just get some economic relief in time for Christmas after all.
After months of gridlock, congressional leaders were zeroing in Wednesday on a $900 billion coronavirus stimulus package that would bankroll another round of direct checks to most taxpayers, renew lapsed federal unemployment benefits and deliver more subsidies to struggling small businesses.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (RKy.), the top lawmakers of their respective parties, both sounded optimistic that a stimulus bill will make its way through Congress by Friday, when the federal government runs out of money.
“We’re making progress, that’s all I can say,” Pelosi told reporters in between phone calls with McConnell, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, President Trump’s pointman in the stimulus talks, and other negotiators.
Lawmakers are hoping to attach the $900 billion stimulus measure to a catchall omnibus spending bill in order to avert a government shutdown. Leaders of both parties have agreed to stay in session until they reach a deal on both fronts, as the pandemic resurges at a catastrophic rate, with the U.S. coronavirus death toll now topping 300,000.
If successful, the $900 billion stimulus injection would be the first round of federal relief for pandemic-ravaged Americans since the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March.
The blueprint currently on the table is far smaller than the $3 trillion measure Democrats pushed for, but larger than the $550 billion bill that Republicans long claimed was all the U.S. could afford.
A Republican official familiar with the talks told the Daily News that a deal in principle could be announced as early as late Wednesday night.
Signs of a long-delayed breakthrough came after Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) agreed to drop their demand for the bill to include $160 billion in bailouts for state and local governments.
In an apparent trade-off, Republicans are now looking likely to support $600 stimulus checks for most U.S. taxpayers along with a weekly federal $300 boost for unemployed workers to partially renew the $600 jobless enhancement that expired over the summer.
McConnell has apparently also dropped his push for the bill to include a controversial liability shield that would protect businesses, schools and other entities from lawsuits alleging coronavirus-related wrongdoing.
Other provisions of the bill include $300 billion in aid for small businesses, mostly through the popular Paycheck Protection
Program, some relief for hard-hit transit agencies, including about $4 billion for New York City’s MTA, and funding for COVID-19 vaccine distribution.
But Gov. Cuomo. and Mayor de Blasio both slammed the deal for failing to include relief for states and reiterated their warning that mass layoffs could ensue in New York as a result.
In a briefing from Albany, Cuomo called it “madness.”
“After the election people were supposed to put their politics aside and actually do their job,” Cuomo said. “Apparently, that hasn’t happened.”
“A deal that sidelines local aid is a deal that sidelines our recovery,” de Blasio added from a City Hall briefing.
Congressional progressives, meanwhile, fumed that Republican leaders apparently succeeded in getting the unemployment enhancement to only span 12 or even eight weeks, as opposed to the 16 proposed by Democrats.
“Do they know that people in red states are hungry too, or do they just not care? This is inhumane,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill are defending the concessions because they bank on President-elect Joe Biden to quickly press Congress for another stimulus package once he takes office on Jan. 20.
Biden confirmed he’s on board with that plan.
“The stimulus package is encouraging,” Biden told reporters at his transition team headquarters in Delaware, “but it’s a down payment, an important down payment on what’s going to have to be done in the beginning of January and into February.”
The looming government shutdown has added a layer of legislative urgency to the notoriously unproductive stimulus negotiations.
Lawmakers are supposed to recess for the rest of the year on Dec. 18, but Pelosi and McConnell have both instructed their members to be ready to work through the holidays if necessary.
If both chambers of Congress ultimately pass a stimulus-omnibus combo, Trump still needs to put his signature on the measures for them to become law.
Mostly focused on his futile bid to overturn the election he lost, Trump has been largely absent in the stimulus negotiations.