Post-election rancor clouds relief
WASHINGTON — President-elect Joe Biden’s top allies on Capitol Hill adopted a combative posture on COVID-19 relief on Thursday, pressing their case for a $2 trillion bill that’s a nonstarter for Republicans and faulting the GOP for dragging its feet on acknowledging Biden’s victory.
The message from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. was that Republicans should concede Biden won and immediately return to negotiations on COVID relief, with the Democrats’ $2.4 trillion “HEROES Act” as the starting point.
“It’s most unfortunate that the Republicans have decided that they will not respect the will of the people,” Pelosi told reporters. “It’s like the house is burning down, and they just refuse to throw water on it.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., reiterated that Republicans controlling the Senate simply won’t accept abill of the size that Schumer and Pelosi want.
“That’s not a place I think we’re willing to go. But I do think there needs to be another package. Hopefully, we can get past the impasse we’ve had now for four or five months and get serious about doing something that’s appropriate,” McConnell told reporters.
Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy of California, speaking just minutes later from the same podium, accused Pelosi of playing politics with COVID, deliberately dragging out preelection talks on new relief to deny President Donald Trump a victory that could have helped him in the election.
The continued battling comes as caseloads are spiking across the country in a third wave of the pandemic. The rebound of the economy has been relatively strong so far, but both sides agree more help is needed — even as they spar over specifics like jobless assistance and the means to distribute treatments and vaccines.
“We need another COVID relief bill,” said moderate GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “We need another round of the (paycheck protection) program that’s aimed at the most distressed businesses or otherwise theywill not be able to keep employing theirw orkers and theywill close their doors forever. We need more funding for schools, for health care providers, for the airlines and bus lines.”
The combative postures all around don’t appear to bode well for a quick resolution. Capitol Hill is in limbo, frozen by the refusal of Trump and Republicans like McCarthy to accept Biden’s victory and by two Senate runoff elections in Georgia that Republicans are favored to win to maintain control of the chamber.
Pelosi and Schumer, meanwhile, continue to press COVID relief proposals like more than $400 billion in aid to state and local governments that McConnell won’t go for.
The two later released a “readout” of a call with Biden, setting benchmarks for a lame-duck relief deal that “provides resources to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, relief for working families and small businesses, support for state and local governments trying to keep frontline workers on the payroll, expanded unemployment insurance, and affordable health care for millions of families.”