As the U.S. economic crisis deepens and ever more Americans are left unemployed, negotiations between Congressional Democrats and the Trump White House on Covid-19 relief collapsed and the aftermath was a finger-pointing game.
On Friday, “Democratic leaders launched a last-ditch effort” to revive the talks … summoning Trump administration negotiators to the Capitol … in hopes of generating progress,” reports the Associated Press.
The president took Friday off , golfing at his resort in Bedminster NJ, with nothing on his official schedule.
The breakdown of the talks, says the AP, puts at risk “more than $100 billion to help reopen schools, a fresh round of $1,200 direct payments to most people and hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments … as tax revenues shrivel.”
There were four key negotiators: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
They met for more than three hours on Thursday and two more on Friday, emerging with little but complaints about their deep disagreements.
“To hear each side tell the tale, the other is to blame,” says The Hill.
In a CNBC interview with Pelosi on Thursday, host Jim Cramer asked why she couldn’t “go across the aisle” and propose giving “a huge chunk of money to the people who are disenfranchised, to minorities who want so badly to stay in business and can’t and to people who are trying to go to college.”
Pelosi replied: “Perhaps you mistook [the Republicans] for somebody who gives a damn for what you just described.”
Mnuchin insisted that “We understand where we are and where they are. … I think there’s a lot of issues we are close to a compromise position on, but I think there’s a handful of very big issues that we are still very far apart.”
Schumer insisted the Democrats wanted compromise — to “meet in the middle,” he says — but that the Republicans refused.
The Trump officials say the direct opposite.
President Trump is “coming to the realization that perhaps some of our Democrats, both in the House in the Senate, are not serious about compromise and are not serious about trying to meet the needs of the American people,” Meadows told reporters.
“Trump is poised to sign executive orders deferring payroll taxes and taking other steps to address the weak economy,” White House adviser Larry Kudlow said Friday,” reports the Washington Post. Kudlow insisted that the president is “not bluffing.”
Democrats were adamant that any deal continue the $600 a week in supplemental jobless benefits for the country’s millions of unemployed, which expired on July 31. Republicans insisted on cutting that to $200 a week.
“Away in the background is the debate over extending federal aid to state and local governments, whose budgets have been decimated by the virus,” reported Barron’s.
Democrats want roughly $1 trillion in new funding, citing the need to keep first responders, other emergency services and hospitals running during the pandemic.
Republicans see that as a “bailout” for states that made “bad budget decisions … prior to the pandemic,” The Hill says.
Mnuchin said Trump “is simply not willing to sign a bill “that has a massive amount of money to bail out” state and local governments.
