Trump bucks GOP, seeks huge stimulus
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Wednesday called on congressional Republicans to support a massive economic relief bill with “much higher numbers” and stimulus payments for Americans, abruptly proposing an entirely different plan than what the Senate GOP sought to advance in recent days.
His Twitter post could reframe talks that have stalled for more than a month and put the focus on Senate Republicans at a moment when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-calif., was under pressure from her caucus to come up with a new solution.
Democratic leaders immediately seized on Trump’s new position and suggested it validated their position.
“We are encouraged that after months of the Senate Republicans insisting on shortchanging the massive needs of the American people, President Trump is now calling on Republicans to ‘go for the much higher numbers’ in the next coronavirus relief package,” Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. “We look forward to hearing from the president’s negotiators that they will finally meet us halfway with a bill that is equal to the massive health and economic crises gripping our nation.”
There was no immediate sign of a renewal of bipartisan talks. The window for action is dwindling quickly with Congress set to recess early next month and not convene again until after the election.
House Democrats in May passed a $3 trillion bill that would include new $1,200 stimulus checks for millions of Americans. But that measure never became law because the White House and Senate Republicans rejected many other parts of the bill.
In the Senate, Republicans couldn’t unify around a $1 trillion bill in July that also included another round of stimulus checks, because so many of their members opposed spending even that much.
Last week, the Senate GOP tried to advance a $300 billion bill without stimulus checks, but Senate Democrats blocked it.
In his Twitter post on Wednesday, Trump mischaracterized Democrats’ position by saying they were “heartless” for not wanting “to give STIMULUS PAYMENTS to people who desperately need the money, and whose fault it was NOT that the plague came in from China. Go for the much higher numbers, Republicans, it all comes back to the USA anyway (one way or another!).”
Democrats had, in fact, supported these additional stimulus payments.
Senate Majority Whip John Thune, R-S.D., said in response to Trump’s tweet, “I assume that means he wants to make a deal.”
“I’m not sure what higher numbers, what that means. That probably needs to get translated for us,” Thune added. “But I know kind of what the threshold is for what we can get Republican votes for in the Senate, and I think if the number gets too high anything that got passed in the Senate would be passed mostly with Democrat votes and a handful of Republicans, so it’s going to have to stay in sort of a realistic range.”
Another senior Senate Republican, Roy Blunt of Missouri, said a deal could be reached but that they likely needed an agreement by the end of September.
“We need to get busy finding out what we can all agree on,” he said, acknowledging it would have to be higher than the $1 trillion bill Senate Republicans released in July.
Blunt pointed to a $1.5 trillion proposal released on Tuesday by the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House, which included provisions allowing it to get smaller or larger depending on rates of hospitalizations and vaccinations.
“Maybe the escalator clause concept gives everybody a little something to brag about,” Blunt said. “There’s a deal there. I think it would be really a shame if we don’t figure out how to grab hold of it.”