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As Washington works on its fourth legislative response to the coronavirus crisis, analysts are predicting that the next big spending deal isn’t likely to become a reality for weeks.
The next bill is no longer sparking talk about huge outlays on infrastructure improvements, but rather it looks set to focus on extending programs from the last package.
A bipartisan agreement on a new package costing $1 trillion is possible “between the end of April and the middle of May,” said analysts at Beacon Policy Advisors in a note on Monday.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a Saturday letter to her colleagues in the Democratic-led chamber that the next bill should “extend and expand” the measures in Washington’s “Phase 3” bill, which is offering direct payments to Americans and aid to small and large businesses. President Donald Trump signed that $2 trillion measure, known as the CARES Act, into law on March 27.
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“CARES 2 must go further in assisting small businesses including farmers, extending and strengthening unemployment benefits and giving families additional direct payments,” wrote the California Democrat, after pulling back on Friday from her earlier calls to include infrastructure spending in the next bill.
“We must also provide the desperately needed resources for our state and local governments, hospitals, community health centers, health systems and health workers, first responders and other providers on the front lines of this crisis,” she said in her letter.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for his part, said on Friday that “there will be a next measure” after earlier saying he was taking a wait-and-see approach. The Kentucky Republican also said the upcoming bill “should be more a targeted response to what we got wrong and what we didn’t do enough for — and at the top of the list there would have to be the health care part of it.”
Related:The next step for Congress is to fix the $2 trillion coronavirus package
Congress is on recess and slated to get back to work on April 20, though lawmakers could return to Washington, D.C., sooner or later than planned. More legislators have voiced support for remote voting, but operating that way doesn’t look likely in the near term, with a House Rules Committee report recently pouring cold water on the idea.
“There will be negotiations similar to the original CARES Act,” Beacon’s analysts said. They also noted that the White House reportedly has expressed support for having the next measure include a payroll-tax cut, a capital-gains tax cut, the creation of 50-year Treasury bonds and a waiver that would clear businesses of liability from employees who get the coronavirus causing COVID-19 while working.
U.S. stocks DJIA, +4.65% SPX, +4.58% were rallying on Monday but have been plunging in the past month on coronavirus-related worries.
