WHITE HOUSE FLOATS NARROW RELIEF BILL TO AVOID AID LAPSE

Unemployment benefits approved in March set to expire at end of the week

Top Trump administration officials proposed Sunday potentially short-circuiting stimulus talks with Democrats to rush through a narrower bill to extend federal unemployment benefits that are set to expire this week for millions of Americans.

Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, said he would like to see lawmakers act this week to extend and alter the unemployment program, give tax credits to businesses to help ease reopening costs and grant employers new liability protections — while setting aside other objectives, including Democrats’ priorities.

“Perhaps we put that forward, get that passed, as we can negotiate on the rest of the bill in the weeks to come,” Meadows said on ABC’S “This Week.”

The proposal, echoed by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in his own Sunday interview, was a last-ditch effort by Republicans to prevent the program from lapsing as signs mounted that the nation’s economy was once again weakening amid a resurgence of coronavirus cases.

But as they prepared to roll out their own more expansive relief legislation today, it amounted to a concession that Republicans, slowed by internal divisions, were unlikely to reach a deal on a comprehensive

relief package with Democrats before millions begin losing a $600-a-week benefit passed by Congress in March that has helped contain the economic damage.

With Democrats already on record in opposition to a piecemeal approach, a narrow fix is almost certainly dead on arrival. Republicans know that, suggesting their Sunday proposal may in part be a negotiating tactic laying the groundwork to blame the opposition party when the funds ultimately expire.

Democrats passed their own $3 trillion proposal — which also includes money to bail out states and cities, fully fund the $600 federal jobless benefit and infuse billions more into the nation’s health care system — in May and view the time pinch now as a problem of Republicans’ making that only gives them more leverage in shaping a final bill.

“We’ve been anxious to negotiate for two months and 10 days,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” She said Congress could not leave town for its August recess until a deal was struck and said that she spent the weekend waiting to hear from the other party and begin talks.

“This is an emergency,” the San Francisco Democrat added. “I don’t know what they have against working families in America to keep this going so long.”

In addition to a difference in negotiating strategy, the two sides have very different views about how to handle even the narrow set of issues identified by the White House. Republicans are proposing altering the jobless benefit program to replace the $600 flat weekly payments with a plan that would replace about 70 percent of a worker’s lost wages — a change Democrats are unlikely to endorse. And Democrats strongly oppose an effort by Republicans to give many employers new protections from lawsuits from their workers, patients or students.

Even before engaging Democrats, Senate Republicans and the White House have struggled to come to terms on their own $1 trillion proposal. They fought over how to structure changes to the unemployment benefit system, whether to include a payroll tax cut pushed by President Donald Trump and whether to tie funds for schools to a commitment that they reopen in person this fall.

Mnuchin and Meadows now claim to be on the same page as Senate Republicans, and after working through the weekend to iron out details, they now plan to begin unveiling the legislative package.

“It’s just down to a handful of items where we believe a phone call here and there should be able to resolve it,” Meadows told reporters as he left Capitol Hill early Sunday evening, after a rare weekend meeting with Senate staff members and Mnuchin.

Formal talks with Democrats could follow, but Sen. Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY, the majority leader, predicted on Friday that they could take “weeks.”

Even then, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., predicted Sunday that months after voting unanimously on the first stimulus bill, much of his party would now be unwilling to support any relief bill. Outright opposition to additional stimulus from the

Republicans’ right flank may only further empower Democrats when two-party talks begin.

“Half the Republicans are going to vote no to any phase four package,” Graham said on Fox News. “That’s just a fact.”

In addition to the unemployment benefits change and liability protections, the Republican legislation is expected to include $105 billion for schools and billions of dollars more for testing, contact tracing and vaccine distribution. Some of the education funds would be reserved for elementary and secondary schools that are reopening and bringing students back to a more traditional, in-person setting.

The bill is likely to provide for another round of stimulus checks to American families, though it remains unclear who would be eligible to receive those payments. Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Sunday that the checks would be worth $1,200, though he did not detail who would receive them.

The largest sticking point, though, has been the effort to scale back unemployment insurance benefits. The White House and congressional Republicans largely agree that the $600 weekly payment established in the $2.2 trillion stimulus law on top of state unemployment pay is too generous, in some cases providing

recipients more money than they received in their job, and discourages people from returning to work.

“The original unemployment benefits actually paid people to stay home, and actually a lot of people got more money staying at home than they would going back to work,” Meadows said Sunday. “So the president has been very clear, our Republican senators have been very clear, we’re not going to extend that provision.”

The debate over addressing the pandemic’s economic impact comes as the United States tallied just shy of 1,000 coronavirus-related daily deaths on Saturday after a four-day streak of four-digit death tolls, the largest such accounting of human loss from the virus since late May.

The country reported 58,951 new infections and 559 additional deaths as of Sunday night, resulting in a seven-day average that was slightly lower than Saturday’s, with a few left to report their totals. The world surpassed 16 million confirmed cases over the weekend and reached at least 641,000 coronavirus-related deaths. The U.S. accounts for about one-fourth of the reported infections and onefifth of the death toll.