Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Stimulus bill stays a work in progress
Plan rollout scratched at last minute
WASHINGTON — The White House and Senate Republicans on Thursday did not reach agreement on a broad coronavirus legislative package as part of negotiations with Democrats.
Their continued impasse will push them right up against a deadline for expiring unemployment benefits at the end of next week.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin suggested that Congress consider a smaller bill to keep the benefits for up to 30 million people in place while other details are negotiated on Capitol Hill, but Democrats and Republicans dismissed that idea.
“This terrible virus is still with us. It kills more Americans every day,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor late Thursday afternoon, hours after a planned roll-out of the legislation was scratched at the last minute.
He said agreement had been reached on “a framework that will enable
Congress to make law and deliver more relief to the American people that is tailored precisely to this phase of the crisis.”
On Wednesday, Republicans had hoped to present a unified plan, but factions within the GOP couldn’t reach an agreement, and now they are hoping to have a united offer to Democrats on Monday.
On Thursday evening, they were still debating over whether to include a demand by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., related to manufacturing and China.
“I guess the only way I could characterize it is, it’s a work in progress,” said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., the No. 2 Senate Republican.
“I think we’ll get something done before it’s all said and done, but like everything else in this process forever, it’s gonna be loud, messy, appear to be almost doomed on many occasions,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
As next week’s deadline neared, the White House agreed to scrap President Donald Trump’s demand to include a payroll tax cut in the package after the provision was met with resistance by some Republicans.
“The Democrats have stated strongly that they won’t approve a Payroll Tax Cut [too bad!]. It would be great for workers. The Republicans, therefore, didn’t want to ask for it,” Trump contended in a tweet.
VIRUS CASES RISE
The delays on Capitol Hill came amid more developments about the coronavirus’s grip on the United States and its economy.
There have now been 4 million confirmed U.S. cases of the virus, far more than any other country. More than 144,000 people have died, including a total of 3,000 since Tuesday.
House Democrats passed a $3 trillion measure in May to send Americans new stimulus checks, and help cities and states, but the White House and Senate Republicans delayed any negotiations until recent days. They had said they wanted the package to be roughly $1 trillion, but the GOP plan has fueled internal divisions about the size and scope of the government response.
Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows emerged from a morning meeting with McConnell to insist that there was “fundamental agreement” on the overall deal. However, they then immediately said it might make more sense to break the bill into pieces so they could address the expiring unemployment benefits.
Democrats and Republicans immediately shot down the idea.
“No, No, No,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. “This is a package. We cannot piecemeal this.”
Complicating matters, the White House renewed its push for language related to the location of the FBI building in downtown Washington, which is cater-corner from Trump International Hotel, according to two people with knowledge of the talks who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss them.
The details were unclear, but the Trump administration previously scrapped a plan to move the FBI headquarters to the suburbs, instead seeking to build a new FBI building in its current location. It was unclear what the FBI building had to do with the coronavirus. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
SUIT LIMITS NONSTARTER
In his floor speech, McConnell said the GOP proposal would include a new round of stimulus checks, aid for schools, money for virus testing, changes to unemployment assistance rules, more money for small businesses, and liability changes setting up legal protections to make it hard for employees to sue their employers if they become sick at work. Democrats have rejected the latter as a nonstarter.
The broad outlines of the shifting GOP proposal would replace the expiring unemployment benefits with a new arrangement that pays jobless Americans roughly $200 per week instead of $600 on top of the state benefit.
While Mnuchin said in a television interview that they would seek to limit the new payments to 70% of a worker’s wages, the outline suggests the level could rise to 100%.
In March, Congress approved an additional $600 weekly benefit for unemployed Americans, and it is set to expire next week. The unemployment rate in June was 11.1%, down from its high several months ago.
“We don’t want this to expire next Friday,” Mnuchin said. “It’s not a difficult concept. You don’t get paid more to stay home than you do when you have a job.”
Democrats want to extend the $600 payment through January.
“Due to ancient technology, states need between one and four weeks to adjust the $600 boost. At this late hour, the only option to guarantee benefits do not lapse is the Democratic plan to extend the $600 weekly benefit,” said top Finance Committee Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon. “Republicans rejected that plan outright. They were never serious about preventing a lapse in benefits.”
The retreat on the payroll tax idea marked a setback for the White House.
“The president is very focused on getting money quickly to workers right now and the payroll tax takes time, so we’ll come back and look at that later,” Mnuchin told reporters at the Capitol.
He said the decision was made to instead focus on sending another round of stimulus checks to Americans because that approach would put money in people’s pockets more quickly.
PAYROLL TAX CUT
Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who advised Trump’s 2016 campaign, said he was “very discouraged” that the GOP package would leave out the payroll tax cut but include the $1,200 stimulus payments, arguing that the president risked alienating his conservative base over the move.
“We’ve gone in less than 10 days from Trump saying that he won’t sign a bill without a payroll tax cut to the bill they’re drafting not having a payroll tax cut,” Moore said. “There is no benefit from dumping money from helicopters into people’s laps.”
Democrats and Republicans had already supported sending another round of stimulus checks to most adults, and now that idea appears to be one of a few areas where there is bipartisan support. The document did not specify who would receive the direct payments or how much the checks would be.
Democrats slammed Republicans for the delay in releasing their legislation.
“Our Republican colleagues have been so divided, so disorganized and so unprepared that they have to struggle to draft even a partisan proposal within their own conference, before they talk to a single Democrat,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor.
No new money for state and local governments was expected, but instead the legislation would allow local leaders more flexibility in spending $150 billion allocated in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act in March. Tax credits were expected to encourage businesses to retain workers and help them enact safety protections in workplaces.
Another round of funding for the small-business Paycheck Protection Program was also expected.
The legislation would substantially expand the program to aid small businesses, relaxing the terms of a loan program designed to help them maintain their payrolls and creating a new “working capital” loan to cover operating expenses.
The proposal would also more heavily restrict the number of businesses that were eligible, including by requiring evidence of steep revenue losses during the recession.
The summary also includes $26 billion for vaccine development and deployment, $20 billion in direct payments to farmers and a total of $105 billion for education, $30 billion of which would be reserved for institutions that reopen.
The Republican package will also include tax breaks for businesses to hire and retain workers, and to help shops and workplaces retool with new safety protocols. A document circulating among lobbyists claims that the package would increase the deduction for business meals to 100%, offering help to the restaurant industry.
SCHOOLS MONEY
At the White House, Trump touted the GOP plan’s $105 billion to help schools and universities reopen.
It contains $70 billion to help kindergarten-through-12th-grade schools reopen, $30 billion for colleges and $5 billion for governors to allocate. Trump said he wants the school money linked to reopenings. In McConnell’s package, the money for K-12 would be split between those that have in-person learning and those that don’t.
If local public schools don’t reopen, the money should go to parents to send their children to other schools or teach them at home, Trump said. “If the school is closed, the money should follow the student,” he said.
Election-year politics have complicated the talks as several vulnerable senators up for reelection push for more generous spending, while fiscal conservatives in the Senate GOP conference oppose spending any more money after Congress already pumped about $3 trillion into the economy in March and April.
Information for this article was contributed by Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim and Jeff Stein of The Washington Post; by The New York Times; and by Andrew Taylor and Lisa Mascaro of The Associated Press.