With federal unemployment benefits expiring on Friday — a serious blow to millions of Americans who lost jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic — the Senate became bogged down in partisan fighting and left town without a resolution to the crisis.
And two more hours of high-level talks on Thursday night between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on one side and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the other yielded almost no progress. The talks will continue through the weekend, but a deal seems far off at this point.
"We had a long discussion," Schumer told reporters after the meeting ended late Thursday night. "And we just don't think they understand the gravity of the problem. The bottom line is this is the most serious health problem and economic problem we've had in a century and 75 years, and it takes really good strong bold action, and they don't quite get that."
The end of the $600-per-week federal benefit, when combined with the lapsing of an eviction moratorium, will likely lead to serious financial problems for those hit hardest by the pandemic and economic collapse. More than 1.4 million people filed initial unemployment claims last week, according to the Department of Labor, while the U.S. economy contracted by more than nine percent in the second quarter of 2020, the worst drop on record.
Faced with Democratic resistance, as well as opposition in their own ranks, Senate Republicans temporarily abandoned their hopes for a large-scale coronavirus relief package on Thursday tried to pass a standalone extension of federal unemployment insurance. But that effort was blocked by Democrats.
As the Senate prepared to leave Washington Thursday afternoon, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a procedural step to force debate on the issue on the floor next week, although he never specified what he wants a vote on. In a floor speech, McConnell accused Schumer of resisting any kind of agreement.
“If that is their position, they’ll have to vote on it for the entire country to see,” McConnell said.
Schumer, however, dismissed the move as nothing but a stunt and blamed an intra-party GOP struggle for the stalemate over the federal benefits.
“They’ve woken up to the fact that we’re at a cliff, but it’s too late,” Schumer said. “It’s too late because even if we were to pass this measure, almost every state says people would not get their unemployment for weeks and months. All because of the disunity, dysfunction of the Republican caucus.”
The leading GOP proposal, offered by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), would renew federal unemployment payments at 66 percent of lost wages, or $200 per week. The strategy had the general backing from the White House, which is eager to extend the bulked up unemployment insurance.
Republicans viewed the Johnson proposal as a way to put pressure on Senate Democrats the day before the benefit lapsed. And they noted, it was far more than what was approved more than a decade ago as the Democratic-run Congress reacted to the 2008 financial crisis.
But Schumer retorted that Johnson's bill was a step in the wrong direction. Schumer instead offered a unanimous request proposal to have the Senate approve the House-passed Heroes Act, which Johnson objected to.
Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) later attempted to pass a one-week extension to the $600 in boosted benefits. But Schumer objected, deriding the effort as another stunt. The New York Democrat then proceeded to try again to pass the Heroes Act, which Republicans blocked.
At a White House press conference on Thursday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he supported the week-long extension offered by McSally as a "temporary measure" to allow negotiations to move forward and complained when Democrats objected.
He also promised Meadows and Mnuchin would make some new proposals to break the deadlock, although he didn't go into details.
In the discussions in Pelosi's office later in the evening, Mnuchin and Meadows offered a longer extension of the $600-per-week benefit to cover several months, but only as a stand-alone measure, according to sources familiar with the talks. Pelosi and Schumer rejected the offer, saying they don't want to negotiate an agreement in piecemeal fashion. Democrats also insist the federal payment should extend well into 2021, which Republicans are unwilling to do.
The two sides also squabbled over a number of other flashpoints, including state and local aid, which has emerged as a major difference between the parties. Democrats are seeking more than $900 billion in such funding, while the White House and Senate Republicans — arguing that a huge chunk of such money already approved by Congress hasn't been spent — want to spend only a fraction of that amount.
"The proposals we made were not received warmly," Meadow told reporters in the Capitol after the meeting broke up late Thursday evening.
For Pelosi and Schumer, the White House and Senate GOP leadership don't understand the enormity of the problems the country faces, and they refuse to try to break their package down into smaller pieces.
"They understand that we have to have a bill, but they just don't realize how big it has to be," Pelosi added.
The partisan jockeying could not come at a worse moment. There is no end in sight to the coronavirus, which so far has claimed 150,000 American lives and sickened more than 4 million.
The Trump administration remains at an impasse with both members of its own party and Democratic leadership over the boosted federal unemployment benefits. The March CARES Act provided an additional $600 weekly benefit that’s on the cusp of expiring, while Democrats are pushing for the full $600 to go into next year.
Meanwhile, Republicans argue the benefits provide a disincentive to work and instead want to see a temporary flat payment of $200 a week until states can adjust their systems to offer 70 percent wage replacement.
McConnell, for his part, accused Pelosi and Schumer of not wanting to engage on any issue in order to pressure Republicans to cave in on the Heroes Act.
“Both Republicans and Democrats agree that in these extraordinary times it makes sense for the federal government to provide historic additional help on top of normal unemployment,” McConnell said. “But the speaker and the Democratic leader say they won’t agree to anything unless the program pays people more to stay home than to work.”
Schumer retorted earlier in the day that negotiating with White House and Senate Republicans is like “trying to nail JELL-O to the wall.”
“Who is leading the effort on the Republican side,” Schumer asked. “Chief Meadows and Secretary Mnuchin….Leader McConnell has said that Democrats won’t engage. I would remind him if he refuses to go into the room when Speaker Pelosi, Secretary Mnuchin, chief of staff Meadows and I sit in there.”
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