Senate Republicans promised to reveal details of their $1 trillion Covid-19 relief bill on Monday afternoon.
Assuming that happens (it’s been delayed before), the hard part can finally begin: negotiations with the Democrats, who passed their relief bill in the House earlier this year.
Among other things, Trump administration officials say, the GOP bill calls for cutting the federal benefit for those left unemployed by the pandemic from $600 per week to $200.
A glance at the numbers underscore just how difficult the partisan haggling will be: the GOP wants to spend $1 trillion in total; the Democrats, $3-4 trillion.
Politico warns that despite the pressure for a rapid 2nd-round response to the coronavirus pandemic, Americans “should expect this thing to drag into the first or second week of August.”
As a practical matter, Republicans don’t seriously expect their bill to pass Congress in anything like the form being unveiled Monday. It “is meant to act as a negotiation marker for the GOP — it is not intended to pass the chamber” in its current form, Politico says.
What’s more, Republicans are far from united on just what they want.
“Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said Sunday on [Fox News] that half of the GOP will vote against whatever the leadership comes up with. If that’s true, Democrats hold the keys,” Politico says.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said Sunday, also on Fox, that the GOP relief plan will “include another round of $1,200 stimulus checks as well as a smaller version of the enhanced unemployment insurance that has been credited with helping to keep the U.S. economy afloat,” Vox reports.
Mnuchin said the bill would end federal insurance aid, which currently provides millions of unemployed Americans with an $600 per week on top of their state unemployment payments — something the Democrats want to retain.
In the Republican package, that program would be replaced by one that, Vox says, “would amount to cutting the additional payment down to roughly $200 a week.”
With so many contentious balls in the air, juggling them long enough to come to a bipartisan agreement looks arduous indeed.
Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows both suggested over the weekend that Congress might need to pass “a narrow bill, including just the unemployment insurance, schools money and liability provisions,” says the Washington Post.
But Democrats have already rejected that approach, and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the majority leader, hasn’t embraced it either.
One thing the Republican bill will not include is the payroll tax cut President Trump has demanded: Senate Republicans never seriously considered it.
