Senate falls far short of votes needed to advance stimulus bill

Negotiations go on amid fear of another stock market plunge

Senate Democrats blocked a massive coronavirus stimulus bill from moving forward Sunday as partisan disputes raged over the legislation that’s aimed at arresting the economy’s precipitous decline.

Lawmakers had hoped to pass a massive $1.8 trillion bill by today, but on Sunday night they were scrambling to revive talks, with the stock market poised for another sharp drop and households and businesses fretting about an uncertain future.

Negotiations continued even as the initial procedural vote fell short, with 47 senators voting in favor and 47 opposed. The tally was well short of the 60 votes that were needed to move forward. The number of “aye” votes was especially low because five Republicans are quarantined over coronavirus fears.

Although senators of both major parties and Trump administration officials vowed to continue negotiating — around the clock if necessary — the vote was the latest negative signal about Con

gress’ ability to come together around the legislation, which aims to inject close to $1.8 trillion into businesses and households. Policymakers are scrambling to address a spike in layoffs and businesses gasping for assistance as millions of Americans stay home to avoid contagion.

Ever since Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., introduced the legislation Thursday night, senators have missed one self-imposed deadline after another to reach a deal. The vote Sunday evening was delayed three hours so talks could continue after it became clear it would fail, but no resolution was reached and it failed anyway.

“Right now, they’re not there,” President Trump said from the White House with the vote underway. “But I think that the Democrats want to get there. And I can tell you for a fact, the Republicans want to get there. And I don’t think anybody actually has a choice.”

Indeed, the sheer magnitude of the potential calamity kept lawmakers at the bargaining table as negotiators on both sides said they must deliver to slow the financial landslide that is disrupting millions of businesses and households by the day.

At the same time, McConnell said it was time for Democrats to “take ‘yes’ for an answer” and accept a bill that he said incorporated many of their ideas. Democrats, though, said McConnell’s bill was tilted too far in favor of corporations and did not include much oversight for $500 billion in loans and guarantees that could go to firms selected by the Treasury Department.

Senate Democrats and Republicans spent Friday and Saturday negotiating over the legislation with both sides saying they’d made progress, until McConnell announced late Saturday that he was moving forward on drafting a bill even though there was not yet a final deal. Each side quickly blamed the other for the breakdown.

After the vote, McConnell angrily lectured Democrats about the outcome. Republicans had hoped to move forward to final passage of the legislation today, a goal that now looks improbable.

“The notion that we have time to play games here with the American economy and the American people is utterly absurd,” McConnell said. “The American people expect us to act tomorrow and I want everybody to fully understand if we aren’t able to act tomorrow it will be because of our colleagues on the other side continuing to dicker when the country expects us to come together.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., came to the floor a short time later to declare that Republicans were the ones behaving unreasonably by trying to advance what he called a partisan bill.

Democrats said that despite some concessions on the part of Republicans, the GOP bill still had too many flaws and did not do enough to shore up the health care system and help average Americans.

“Now, let me be clear: the majority leader was well aware of how this vote would go before it happened, but he chose to move forward with it anyway — even though negotiations are continuing, so who’s playing games?” Schumer asked, before adding a hopeful note: “Can we overcome the remaining disagreements in the next 24 hours? Yes. We can and we should. The nation demands it.”

“We are at the point where both sides have come a long way towards each other,” McConnell said Sunday on the Senate floor. “And each side has to decide whether to continue elbowing and arguing over the last several inches, and risk the whole thing ... or whether to shake hands and get it done.”

A major sticking point is a $500 billion pool of money for loans and loan guarantees that Republicans want to create, which some Democrats are labeling a “slush fund” because the Treasury Department would have broad discretion over who receives the money. There is little precedent for a program with a similar size and scope.

“They’re throwing caution to the wind for average workers and people on Main Street and going balls to the wall for people on Wall Street,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said of Republicans.

Trump seemed to acknowledge such concerns on the part of Democrats while insisting that he did not want to offer bailouts.

“I don’t want to give a bailout to a company and then have somebody go out and use that money to buy back stock in the company and raise the price and then get a bonus,” Trump said. “So I may be Republican, but I don’t like that. I want them to use the money for the workers.”

The implications for the standoff became more dire as concerns about the economy intensify. Several senators feared the effect on the markets if they do not reach an agreement by this morning. Underscoring the spreading dangers, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., on Sunday became the first senator to announce that he had tested positive for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. He had worked out with fellow lawmakers in the Senate gym that morning.

Not long afterward, GOP Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, both of Utah, announced that they’d be going into self-quarantine because of being in contact with Paul.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., meanwhile, suggested that House Democrats might chart their own course and release their own bill, which could put the Democratic-led House and the Republican-led Senate on different tracks and delay final agreement on any deal. The White House had expressed hope that a bill could be signed into law by today.

“We will be introducing our own bill and hopefully it will be compatible” with what’s happening on the Senate side, Pelosi said after a late morning meeting with McConnell, Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

The stock market has lost 10,000 points in six weeks, and some analysts believe more than 3 million people filed for unemployment benefits last week. Much of the U.S. economy is frozen as Americans stay home and cut back on spending, fearful about the coronavirus outbreak. The number of confirmed cases in the U.S. has grown sharply in the past few days, a rise that does not appear to be slowing.

The economic conditions appear to be dramatically worse than first predicted. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard told Bloomberg News in an interview Sunday that the unemployment rate could hit 30% between April and June because of mass layoffs, which would be worse than what occurred during the Great Depression.