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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks at a Nov. 6 press conference.
Having wrapped up business ahead of the Thanksgiving break, Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill were set Friday to retreat to their respective corners to plot strategy for future coronavirus stimulus talks.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer were to meet with President-elect Joe Biden, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was set to talk with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.
Despite the elapsing of two weeks since news organizations called the election in Biden’s favor, there has been little change in public stances on relief legislation on either side of the aisle. Republicans continue to say a smaller package — in the hundreds of billions of dollars, per McConnell, rather than in the trillions — would be preferable to a larger one, like the most recent $2.2 trillion offer from Democrats.
“I had hoped, now that we’re past the election, that the Democrats would work with us,” Mnuchin said in an interview on CNBC.
“I can tell you Mark Meadows and I will be speaking with Mitch McConnell and [House Republican Leader] Kevin McCarthy this morning, and we are going to come up with a plan to sit down with Pelosi and Schumer and try to get a targeted bill done for the people that really need it. And hopefully the Democrats will work with us,” he said.
At her weekly press conference, Pelosi said she would be talking with Biden and Vice President–elect Kamala Harris about the prospects for the rest of the post-election lame duck congressional session and passage of legislation to keep the government open beyond Dec. 11, when the existing stopgap funding expires.
The relationship between a funding bill and stimulus is uncertain at this point. Another funding bill could be another short-term stopgap, despite both sides saying they don’t desire that, or a massive omnibus that would fund the government through next September.
The duration and scope of another must-pass funding bill likely impacts whether it could also carry with it a stimulus package or elements of a stimulus package.
Staffers representing the party leaders on both side of the Capitol met Thursday to discuss the lower-ranking disputes in the omnibus, and Pelosi said Friday she had hoped that meeting would lead to progress on the stimulus front as well.
It had been her hope, she said, that “we would have been able to begin a path to the COVID [relief package]. That didn’t happen, but hopefully it will.”
