A summer surge in coronavirus cases in some parts of the country has prompted more concrete talks among congressional lawmakers and White House officials about another major federal aid package.
Top White House officials acknowledged last week that the package would likely have to be large to help communities deal with the impact of the virus and a new round of lockdown orders that have further damaged the economy.
Marc Short, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, said Tuesday that he anticipates the next package will come with a $1 trillion price tag.
“There’s obviously been a lot of stimulus put in the system over the last couple bills, and so the price tag for us would be that,” he said in an appearance on Bloomberg Radio.
A new round of federal aid will require a compromise between the House and the Senate, and it may be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Both the House and Senate return next week.
In addition to election-year politics ramping up partisanship, the House and Senate must find a way to overcome very different ideas about the size and scope of a new round of aid.
The House, run by Democrats, passed a $3 trillion coronavirus aid package on May 15 and has demanded that the GOP-run Senate endorse the massive bill and send it to President Trump’s desk.
The House bill provides federal money to a broad array of recipients. It includes a new round of direct payments to individuals and families, “hazard pay” for workers, $1 trillion for state and local governments to make up for lost tax revenue and provide healthcare services, $25 billion to bail out the financially troubled post office, and a $50 billion bailout of state pension programs, among other spending.
Senate Republicans have flatly rejected the House bill and said they plan to take up a measure that is a fraction of the cost and targeted to the needs most closely related to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Liability reform, kids in school, jobs, and healthcare,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during a visit to a food pantry in Louisville, Kentucky, on Monday, the Associated Press reported. “That’s where the focus, it seems to me, ought to be.”
McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has pledged that he won’t take up any new aid package in the Senate unless it includes lawsuit liability reform for businesses, healthcare facilities, and schools. Protection from lawsuits, he argues, is necessary to help reopen the economy and banish the threat of getting sued because of the coronavirus.
McConnell last week outlined a Senate package that would provide five-year lawsuit liability as well as a new round of direct aid for lower-income workers. The liability would exclude gross negligence, McConnell said.
The package will also include money to help advance treatments and a vaccine for the coronavirus, Senate Republicans pledged.
“I’ve already asked my appropriating subcommittee that does the health and education and labor appropriations to begin to put a package together that will ensure we have more testing, that we have continued to work on therapeutics, and we have the money we need to move forward with the vaccine,” Sen. Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican and chairman of the health appropriations subcommittee, said.
Blunt said the Senate should be “in the final stages” of completing a new measure by the end of July.
Republicans had called for a pause on new federal coronavirus aid as local economies began reopening and the jobless numbers began to decline. But case surges in large communities in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and California have prompted new restrictions and even new lockdown orders as well as the realization among lawmakers that more federal help will be needed.
“We had hoped we’d be on the way to saying goodbye to this healthcare pandemic,” McConnell said last week at a food bank in Louisville, the Courier Journal reported. “Clearly, it is not over.”
McConnell said he would craft new legislation with Senate Democrats and the White House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will likely have a say in the final deal because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, won’t agree to anything Pelosi opposes.
Congress has already passed more than $2.3 trillion in federal coronavirus aid.
Pelosi on Thursday rejected McConnell’s $1 trillion proposal as far too cheap.
“We get overtures about, can this be in the bill, can that be in the bill, because [Republicans] know there has to be a bill.” Pelosi told reporters. “What doesn’t measure up is it can only be $1 trillion. No, we need $1 trillion for state and local. We need another trillion dollars for unemployment insurance and direct payments, something like that but probably not as much for the testing, tracing, treatment, etc. So $1 trillion is okay. That’s an interesting starting point, but it doesn’t come anywhere near.”
