Mnuchin Focuses on ‘Kids and Jobs’ as GOP Crafts Stimulus Plan
Top Republicans in Congress met Monday with President Donald Trump at the White House on the next COVID-19 aid package as the crisis many hoped would have improved has dramatically worsened, just as emergency relief is expiring.
“I think we’ve made a lot of progress on that and the discussions are going on,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Monday.
New divisions between the Senate GOP majority and the White House posed fresh challenges. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was prepared to roll out the $1 trillion package in a matter of days. But the administration panned more virus testing money and interjected other priorities that could complicate quick passage.
Lawmakers were returning to a Capitol still off-limits to tourists, another sign of the nation’s difficulty containing the coronavirus. Rather than easing, the pandemic’s devastating cycle was happening all over again, leaving Congress little choice but to engineer another costly rescue. Businesses were shutting down again, schools could not fully reopen and jobs were disappearing, all while federal aid expired.
Without a successful federal strategy, lawmakers are trying to draft one.
McConnell and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy met with Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to fine-tune the legislation.
The political stakes were high for all sides before the November election, but even more so for the nation, which now registered more coronavirus infections and a higher death count of 140,500 than any other country.
The House already approved Pelosi’s sweeping $3 trillion effort, giving Democrats momentum heading into negotiations.
The package from McConnell had been quietly crafted behind closed doors for weeks and was expected to include $75 billion to help schools reopen, reduced unemployment benefits alongside a fresh round of direct $1,200 cash payments to Americans, and a sweeping five-year liability shield against coronavirus lawsuits.
But as the White House weighed in, it has put the administration at odds with GOP allies in Congress. The administration was panning some $25 billion in proposed new funds for testing and tracing, said one Republican familiar with the discussions. Trump was also reviving his push for a payroll tax break, which was being seriously considered, said another Republican. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks.
The payroll tax Trump wanted also divided his party. Senate Republicans in particular opposed the payroll tax break as an insufficient response to millions of out-of-work Americans, especially as they tried to keep the total price tag of the aid package at no more than $1 trillion.
“The payroll tax cut to me is very important,” Trump said.
As McConnell prepared to roll out his $1 trillion-plus proposal, he acknowledged it would not have full support. This would be the fifth virus aid package, after the $2.2 trillion bill passed in March, the largest U.S. intervention of its kind.
The first round of virus aid is running out.
A federal $600-a-week boost to regular unemployment benefits would expire at the end of the month. So, too, would the federal ban on evictions on millions of rental units.
With 17 straight weeks of unemployment claims topping 1 million — usually about 200,000 — many households were facing a cash crunch and losing employer-backed health insurance coverage.
Despite flickers of an economic upswing as states eased stay-at-home orders in May and June, the jobless rate remained at double digits, higher than it ever was in the last decade’s Great Recession.
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