DEMOCRATS BACK BIPARTISAN AID BILL
Pelosi, Schumer call on McConnell to return to talks
The top Democrats in Congress on Wednesday endorsed a bipartisan $908 billion stimulus compromise, offering a significant concession in an effort to pressure Republicans to revive stalled talks on providing additional relief before the end of the year.
After months of publicly insisting that another stimulus package must provide at least $2 trillion, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, called on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to return to the negotiating table with a bill less than half that size as a starting point.
President-elect Joe Biden, whose advisers had pushed privately in recent weeks for lawmakers to make compromises to pass an economic aid agreement as quickly as possible, also offered a blessing of sorts for the effort. In a virtual event with laid-off workers and a small-business owner struggling amid the pandemic, Biden said the bipartisan package “wouldn’t be the answer, but it would be immediate help for a lot of things, quickly.”
The measure, spearheaded by Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would restore lapsed federal jobless benefits, providing $300 a week for 18 weeks; would include $288 billion for strug
gling small businesses, restaurants and theaters and $160 billion for fiscally strapped cities and states; and would create a temporary liability shield for businesses operating amid the pandemic.
The Democratic decision to publicly embrace it offered no guarantee of a swift deal with McConnell, who Tuesday began circulating a significantly smaller framework with the promise of a presidential signature. Should talks resume, it also remains
unclear how hard Democrats would push to expand the size of the package.
The two sides would need to bridge big differences on the details, including two particularly thorny issues: whether to send federal money to state and local governments to help patch budgetary holes opened by the recession, which many Republicans oppose at any dollar amount, and how to limit the legal liability for businesses opened during the pandemic, an effort many
Democrats have criticized.
“Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate, and we believe that with good-faith negotiations, we could come to an agreement,” Pelosi and Schumer said in their statement. The pair had sent a new offer of their own Monday evening to McConnell and to Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, but after a group of moderate senators in both parties presented a plan Tuesday, Pelosi and
Schumer threw their weight behind the framework “in the spirit of compromise.”
It amounted to a noteworthy admission by Democrats that they could no longer hold out for the sweeping $2.4 trillion package that they had demanded, particularly as coronavirus cases rise across the country and calls for relief continue to mount. For months, Republicans have blamed Democratic leaders for insisting on the expansive plan and blocking smaller pieces of aid — like new loans for small businesses — from advancing.
The shift in demands came after Biden said Tuesday that any stimulus legislation passed during the lameduck session “is lucky to be, at best, just a start” and that Congress should act in the coming days.
Pelosi and Schumer, in their statement, also pointed to the imminent distribution of a vaccine and the federal funds that will be required to safely disperse the first rounds of it across the country.
The compromise plan, drafted by a bipartisan group that included Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va.; Mitt Romney, R-Utah; and Angus King, IMaine, is intended to serve as a stopgap measure through March. It was endorsed by the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, whose members and staff consulted on it with some senators after unveiling a similar bipartisan proposal.
Manchin said the group hoped to have text ready as early as Monday.
McConnell appeared to pan the bipartisan framework Tuesday, repeatedly reiterating that President Donald Trump’s support would be needed for any coronavirus deal.
But some lawmakers indicated that they would be open to supporting the bipartisan framework, even if it crept closer to $1 trillion than some of their colleagues would have liked.
The effort received additional support Wednesday from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the influential business lobbying group in Washington.