Senate reopens despite risks as House focuses on more aid
WASHINGTON — The Senate reopened Monday in a Capitol largely shuttered by the coronavirus, but prospects for quick action on a new aid package are uncertain, with a deepening debate over how best to confront the deadly pandemic and its economic devastation.
Senators convened for the first time since March, while the House stayed away due to the health risks, as the conflicted Congress reflects an uneasy nation. The Washington area remains a virus hot spot under stayhome rules.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell opened the session, defending his decision to focus the agenda on confirming President Trump’s nominees rather than the virus outbreak.
“We have important work to do for the nation,” McConnell said. He said the Senate would “show up for work like the essential workers that we are.”
Senate Republicans are trying to set the terms of debate, frustrated that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, DSan Francisco, was able to fill up earlier aid bills with Democratic priorities. They’re reluctant to unleash federal funds beyond the nearly $3 trillion Congress already has approved in virus relief and hope Trump’s push to kickstart the economy will reduce the need for more aid.
But Pelosi is marching ahead without them, assembling a new aid package that Democrats expect to unveil soon.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer decried bringing senators and staff back without confronting the crisis.
Schumer called it “one of the strangest sessions of the United States Senate in history.”
For the past more than five weeks, the COVID19 crisis has all but closed Congress, a longer absence than during the 1918 Spanish Flu or the 2001 terror attacks.
Senators returned to a changed place with new guidelines, including the recommendation that senators wear masks — face coverings were available for free, and being worn by staff — keep their distance and leave most staff at home. Public access remains limited, including at public hearings. The Capitol itself is closed to visitors and tours.
Democrats are eyeing a new aid package as states and cities seek as much as $1 trillion to prevent local layoffs and keep paying nurses, police, firefighters and other frontline workers as local revenues tank during the stayhome shutdown.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, DN.Y., the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, said Monday that Democrats will produce legislation “sooner rather than later.”
In the Senate, McConnell has loaded up the schedule with hearings for Trump’s nominees, including Justin Walker, a conservative, McConnellbacked pick to be a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia Circuit, which is seen as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.
A nomination hearing also is scheduled for John Ratcliffe, the Texas Republican congressman who is Trump’s choice to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.