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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks to reporters following a weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon last month.
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Let’s get ready to rumble.
That’s the atmosphere on Capitol Hill as lawmakers get ready to return Monday for a frenetic two- or three-week sprint to pass the first big coronavirus aid bill since March, with implications for the fight against the pandemic but also the November elections.
While some things have changed since the $1.7 trillion CARES Act was signed into law March 27, others have not: Cases of COVID-19 continue to increase in many states and many businesses remain shuttered or only partially open.
But while the CARES Act debate was largely conducted on the Republican home field of the Senate (the Democratic-held House having gone into recess), Democrats enter this next round publicly confident. Polls show sinking approval ratings for President Donald Trump and narrowing Senate races that increase the odds of a Democratic takeover.
“They know there’s going to be a bill,” and it is going to be bigger than Republicans are now saying, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday at her weekly press conference. “First, it was going to be no bill, and then it was going to be some little bill. Now it’s $1.3 (trillion). That’s not enough. That’s not enough.”
Pelosi said she’s had no substantive talks with Trump administration officials, though she said she has talked with them and a few Republican senators on “individual things.”
Democrats are sticking with their $3.4 trillion bill, dubbed the “Heroes Act,” passed in May as their opening bid, even as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dismissed it as an expensive liberal wish list.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, told reporters Thursday he expects Senate Republicans to release their counteroffer bill Tuesday or Wednesday, after huddling with the White House .
The first week of August is quickly shaping up as the target date getting to a deal. While the House is formally scheduled to leave at the end of July, members have been warned to be ready to stay an extra week and Pelosi has said they could stay even longer, depending on the progress of talks.
“I think you can anticipate this coming to a head in the next three weeks ,” McConnell said during a tour of southeastern Kentucky hospitals earlier this week, according to the Corbin, Ky.-based News Journal.
McConnell has laid out the Senate GOP’s priorities as children, jobs and health care. That includes legal liability protections for businesses, health care providers and schools related to coronavirus.
“Nobody knew how to deal with the coronavirus and unless you are grossly negligent or intentionally engaged in harming somebody, you’re going to be immunized from the epidemic of lawsuits that’s already developing surrounding the pandemic,” McConnell said before the July 4 break.
That issue, liability, and an add-on amount for jobless benefits that expires soon are likely to be the two biggest sticking points ahead for lawmakers. Pelosi has pooh-poohed the idea of enhanced liability protections, saying instead businesses should be held to standards issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s most prominent business lobbying group, has put liability protections at the top of its priority list. “The Chamber calls on Congress to pass timely, temporary, and targeted liability relief that will provide employers, healthcare providers, non-profits, and educational institutions a safe harbor from these types of lawsuits when they make good-faith efforts to follow applicable public health guidelines,” the Chamber said in a letter to the White House and congressional leaders Thursday.
The unemployment add-on, now $600 a week added to the regular jobless benefit checks, will also be tough issue to resolve. In their bill, House Democrats would extend the add-on through Jan. 31, 2021, for most, with some unemployed able to claim it through March 31.
Many Republicans say the $600 amount is too generous because in some cases an unemployed worker can receive more in benefits than they did at their lost job. But the add-on appears popular, with a recent poll by left-leaning Data for Progress and the Groundwork Collaborative showing 69% of those polled supporting renewal in order to avoid cutting people’s income, including 52% of Republicans.
Paring back the add-on from $600 to a lower amount looks like a more likely tack for Republicans. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said one of the administration’s goals is to ensure any new add-on amount doesn’t provide more money than a worker’s old wage and Blunt said “we’re going to have to work our way through that.”
The Chamber proposed cutting back the amount to a maximum of $400 and also phasing it out on state-by-state basis, based on each state’s jobless rate, with the add-on falling to zero at 7%.
Adding to the uncertainty is where the White House will fall on specific issues. The administration has largely kept its powder dry publicly in recent weeks. That’s in contrast to March, as the first big bill was being negotiated in the Senate, when Mnuchin and other officials were fixtures in the U.S. Capitol, shuttling between party leaders’ offices.
The Washington Post reported Thursday the White House is set on getting a payroll tax cut in the upcoming package, a priority rarely mentioned by Republicans on Capitol Hill and notably absent from the Chamber’s list.
Democrats are putting up a unified front ahead of the talks. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters on a conference call Friday, “The bottom line is we’re going to fight for the whole Heroes bill, period.”
Not everything will be a hard fought negotiation, though. The Paycheck Protection Program aimed at helping small businesses keep open by temporarily furloughing workers has been extended into early August and enjoys bipartisan support, though with differences on what tweaks should be made.
Democrats in their bill proposed a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks to go to households, and the Trump administration has signaled it is open to the idea, though Republicans have talked about focusing aid on lower-income workers. And with school districts deciding whether to hold in-person classes, online ones or some combination as the school year begins, there is bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for money to help them reopen.
“I don’t think it should be exclusively based on whether your back in a school room, or not. But I think there’s likely that some of the funding will relate to that because there are additional costs when you reopen these buildings,” Blunt said Thursday.
Even that, though, is a hardly a slam dunk. Trump has tweeted about the idea of withholding federal funds — which are usually a small part of school district budgets — unless they reopen. And Pelosi said the $100 billion included in the House bill is probably inadequate.
“We probably will need more money,” she said.
