Congress eyes new virus aid as crisis deepens

WASHINGTON — Two months after House Democrats approved a $3 trillion COVID-19 aid package, Senate Republicans are poised to unveil their $1 trillion counteroffer, straining to keep spending in check as the virus outbreak spreads and societal fallout deepens.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is expected to roll out the GOP bill as soon as next week, said Wednesday that he conferred with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as the White House’s point man on the negotiations with Democrats.

But having hit “pause” in May, as Mr. McConnell put it, Republicans now face a potentially more dire situation. They had hoped the pandemic would ease and the economic fallout would reverse. Instead, coronavirus cases are spiking, states are resuming shutdowns and parents are wondering if it’s safe to send children back to school.

“Regretfully, this is not over,” Mr. McConnell said during a visit to a hospital in Kentucky.

“There were some that hoped this would go away sooner than it has,” he said, urging residents to wear masks and social distance.

This would be the fifth virus rescue bill since spring, all told an unprecedented federal intervention to counter the times.

Unlike any health crisis since the 1918 Spanish flu and an economic upheaval on par with the Great Depression, Congress is trying to engineer a comprehensive national strategy to bring the pandemic under control.

Polling shows Americans are increasingly uneasy over President Donald Trump’s handling of the virus outbreak, and lawmakers are racing to ease the health and economic crises before they, too, face voters in November.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sweeping $3 trillion coronavirus aid bill, once dismissed by Mr. McConnell and others as a liberal wish list, now seems not as farfetched.

“How many times have we said, ‘We’re at a critical moment?’ ” Ms. Pelosi said Wednesday at the Capitol. “We really are at a critical moment now.”

Both the House and Senate have similar funding priorities — to 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.