In an effort to get bipartisan support for pandemic relief. President Joe Biden hosted ten GOP Senators at the White House Monday afternoon. We haven’t seen a meeting like this between a president and members of a different party in a long time.
While the meeting was lengthy, it looks like there still isn’t a compromise.
The GOP Senators have proposed a “skinny” pandemic relief bill. How skinny? The Washington Post notes:
“…[T]he breadth of what the plan cuts from the Democrats’ plan is remarkable. Among other reductions, stimulus checks would be reduced to $1,000 (and phased out at $50,000 in income for individuals, rather than $75,000), supplemental unemployment insurance would be trimmed by $100 a week, and there would be no state and local aid or minimum wage increase at all.
Biden’s plan calls for $1.9 trillion in assistance. The GOP offer comes in at roughly a third of that, $600 million. In a letter to President Biden, the ten Republicans wrote:
“We want to work in good faith with you and your administration to meet the health, economic and societal challenges of the covid crisis,” the group wrote in a letter to Biden.
Politico’s Playbook noted:
It’s pretty clear that Democratic leadership thinks the idea is a joke and is ready to move ahead with reconciliation. But there’s more ambiguity — and perhaps internal division — among White House officials about how to handle the GOP offer.
Reconciliation would mean that the Democrats could pass a relief bill with a majority vote and not the 60 senators normally needed to pass a filibuster-proof measure.
