CONGRESS
Negotiators fail to reach deal in coronavirus
relief talks
Trump again vowed to issue a series of contentious
executive orders amid the stalemate.
By MARIANNE
LEVINE, JOHN BRESNAHAN and ANITA KUMAR
08/07/2020
12:15 PM EDT
Updated:
08/07/2020 09:02 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/last-try-coronavirus-relief-deal-392564
Last-ditch
negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package failed to yield a deal
Friday, ending talks for now and leaving bitter feelings among White House
officials and Democratic leaders.
As the
negotiations collapsed, President Donald Trump vowed again that he would issue
a series of controversial executive orders in response to the breakdown.
“If
Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage, I will act under my
authority as president to get Americans the relief they need,” Trump told
reporters at a news conference in Bedminister, N.J.
Trump
insisted he is “totally involved” in the Capitol Hill negotiations, though only
his aides — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff
Mark Meadows — have been meeting with Democrats.
“Tragically
Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer continue to insist on radical left wing policies
that have nothing to do with the China virus, nothing to do with it at all,” he
said.
Trump also
said that he would sign what he called a “major executive order” that would
require health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions for all
customers. But he has made similarly vague promises on health care in the past,
and the administration is simultaneously asking the Supreme Court to overturn
the Affordable Care Act — the health care signed into law by his predecessor,
which guaranteed coverage for preexisting conditions.
His
comments came hours after another meeting between Mnuchin, Meadows, Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer led to no progress. After
the 90-minute meeting, Mnuchin said he and Meadows would recommend Trump take
executive action "based upon our lack of activity."
Friday’s
meeting in Pelosi’s office capped off two weeks of closed-door negotiations
between White House officials and Democratic leaders without a breakthrough.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain unemployed and coronavirus cases and
deaths continue to spike in many areas of the country.
Clinching
an agreement was never going to be easy. From the start, the White House and
Democratic leaders were trillions of dollars apart, with Democrats pushing for
the $3 trillion HEROES Act and the White House aiming to stay at $1 trillion.
Senate Republicans also were divided on their own opening offer, with hard-line
conservatives opposing additional federal spending.
Pelosi and
Schumer said Friday that they were willing to cut down their ask by $1 trillion
if the White House increased their offer by $1 trillion, a move administration
officials rejected.
“There were
only two choices for them. Negotiate with Democrats and meet us in the middle,
don't say it's your way or no way, and if we do that, we can accomplish a whole
lot of things,” Schumer said after the meeting. “The other choice is for them
to do executive orders which by their own admission, they said it to us repeatedly
is not close to as good.”
“I've told
them come back when you are ready to give us a higher number,” Pelosi added.
Trump
administration officials counter that Democrats showed only limited willingness
to make compromises on some key issues. Meadows and Mnuchin pushed for a
short-term deal that would address unemployment benefits and evictions, but
Democrats said they did not want to take a piecemeal approach to negotiations.
Meadows
said Friday that he was “extremely disappointed” to hear the same demands
repeated from the last two weeks.
In their
numerous discussions, Mnuchin, Meadows, Schumer and Pelosi made progress on
narrowing their differences on unemployment insurance but remained far apart on
state and local aid, election security funding and help for renters, among a
host of other issues.
The impasse
could not come at a worse time. The Labor Department reported Friday that the
economy added 1.8 million jobs with the unemployment rate falling to 10.2
percent. But the rate of job growth has slowed, and 1.2 million people filed
for unemployment benefits last week.
Adding to
the economic pressure Americans are facing are the expiration of a moratorium
on evictions and a $600 weekly federal boost in unemployment benefits from
March’s $2 trillion CARES Act. Democrats sought to extend the $600 in the next
coronavirus relief package, but Republicans argued the enhanced benefit
provided a disincentive to go back to work.
The White
House in closed-door negotiations this week offered a $400 weekly benefit until
December, which Democrats rejected.
“It's an
opportunity,” Pelosi said Friday. “But we can't have it be a missed opportunity
to do that by settling for something so low, so beneath meeting the needs of
the American people.”
Max Cohen
contributed to this report.
CONGRESS
How politics, personalities and price tags
derailed Covid relief talks
The collapse of negotiations marks a new low for a
polarized Washington.
Steven
Mnuchin and Mark Meadows
Democrats
said they were able to reach earlier agreements with the White House when
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, left, was the point man and say White House
chief of staff Mark Meadows' presence in the talks has proven an unwelcome
addition. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
By JOHN BRESNAHAN
and MARIANNE LEVINE
08/07/2020
09:33 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/07/what-derailed-coronavirus-relief-talks-392620
What a
difference five months make in the middle of a pandemic.
In March,
as the coronavirus was beginning to hammer the United States, President Donald
Trump and congressional leaders from both parties were able to quickly pass a
$2.2 trillion relief package providing a financial lifeline to millions of
workers and tens of thousands of small businesses facing an apocalyptic
economic slowdown.
There were
some bitter partisan disputes inside the Senate as the bill was crafted, and
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin wore out a path trodding between the offices
of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer (D-N.Y.) as they put together the final deal. In the end, though, one
of the most expensive pieces of legislation in history sailed through Congress
without a single “no” vote.
Fast
forward to August. More than 160,000 Americans are dead, unemployment has soared
to levels not seen since the Great Depression, while federal payments to
laid-off workers have expired, millions more face possible eviction, and
coronavirus cases continue to spike nationwide. Meanwhile, Congress and the
White House are mired in their ancient, all-consuming gridlock.
Two weeks
of closed-door talks — with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schumer facing
off against White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Mnuchin — failed to
lead to a breakthrough on a new coronavirus relief package. The two sides
remained hundreds of billions of dollars apart on overall spending for the new
package, and even more important, were separated by a huge ideological chasm
over what role the government should play at this point in the calamity.
"It
would be nice to do [a deal] with Democrats, but they're just interested in one
thing — and that's protecting people who have not done a good job in managing
cities and states," Trump said on Friday night during a news conference at
his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.
Amid the
deadlock, Trump said he would issue a series of executive orders in the coming
days to address the economic fallout from the pandemic. The orders are likely
to divert tens of billions of dollars in congressionally approved funds to
reinstitute federal unemployment payments, reimpose an eviction moratorium,
continue the suspension of student loan payments and defer federal payroll tax
payments. The unilateral moves could easily draw challenges in court.
Pelosi and
Schumer expressed dismay at Trump’s expected executive orders, which had been
telegraphed by Meadows all week.
“It doesn't
cover [the] opening of schools. It doesn't cover testing,” Schumer complained.
“It doesn't cover dealing with rental assistance. It doesn't cover elections.
It doesn't cover so many things. There's a long list, I could go on and on and
on.”
The
elections are only 88 days away, and both sides are gambling that they've got
more to gain from a stalemate than a deal. Personality clashes also infused the
talks, with the presence of the conservative Meadows having a huge impact on
the outcome. Many Republicans in both chambers didn’t want any deal in the
first place, citing the growing national debt and arguing unspent money from
March’s CARES Act should be pushed out before additional funds were approved.
And then there was the growing emotional and psychological fatigue with the
crisis itself, spurred on by a president who wants to see the country reopen as
fast as possible to help his own political prospects.
Meadows, in
particular, was singled out by Democrats as a major roadblock to any deal.
Democrats point out that they were able to reach earlier agreements with the
White House when Mnuchin was the point man and say Meadows’ presence in the
talks has proven an unwelcome addition.
“[Meadows’]
positions are quite hardened and noncompromising, more so than Mnuchin,”
Schumer said of the co-founder of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. Democrats
assert privately that Meadows was brought in “to blow up a deal,” while Mnuchin
is there “to get something done.”
Meadows,
however, wasn’t having any of it. The former North Carolina lawmaker — who
became Trump’s fourth chief of staff in late March — said he and Mnuchin
offered “many concessions” during the seemingly interminable round of face-to-face
discussions, only to run into unreasonable Democratic resistance.
“I think
it's interesting just to hear the comments from Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi
saying that they want a deal, when behind closed doors their actions do not
indicate the same thing,” he countered.
Pelosi,
meanwhile, lashed out at McConnell for beginning negotiations only in July.
Pelosi noted that the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act in May.
McConnell, though, scoffed at that legislation as nothing more than a Democratic
wish list, and he repeatedly said the Senate would come up with its own plan.
“Mitch
McConnell said pause, he pushed the pause button,” Pelosi said. “If we had
acted in a closer time then so many lives and livelihoods would have been
saved.”
In an interview
with POLITICO this week, McConnell defended his decision to wait, arguing that
a significant amount of the money from CARES had yet to be spent.
And
McConnell also acknowledged that March’s political environment can't be
replicated now.
“It’s a lot
harder now than it was four months ago,” McConnell said. “We’re that much
closer to the election.”
At the end,
though, the biggest problem was the price tag of a new deal.
Republican
lawmakers and the White House wanted to keep the cost of what was likely to be
the year’s last round of coronavirus relief legislation to $1 trillion. Pelosi
and Schumer pushed a Democratic alternative that would cost well over $3
trillion, although they told reporters on Friday that the pair offered to cut a
trillion dollars off that total in order to reach a deal. Schumer said he was
dismayed when Mnuchin and Meadows didn’t leap at his proposal.
“And you
should have seen their faces,” Schumer exclaimed.
With the
election three months away, the political stakes of the impasse are high and
it’s not yet clear which party will suffer most from the botched negotiations.
Trump is
sinking in the polls and the GOP-controlled Senate is in play. Unlike when he
was pushing the March CARES Act, McConnell now leads a deeply divided caucus,
including incumbents facing reelection who want something to campaign on and
fiscal hawks who want to see federal spending drastically cut back. If the
economic misery increases, the party in power is likeliest to be blamed.
But
Democrats are taking a risk too in rejecting any type of short-term agreement
and could face some heat for the lapsed unemployment benefits in particular if
they come to be seen as the roadblock.
The federal
payments that expired at the end of July were $600 per week. The most recent
White House offer was $400-per-week for five months, or state agencies would be
allowed to determine a payment of up to 70 percent of a worker’s lost income
with a $600 weekly cap. Pelosi and Schumer rejected the offer, saying they
wanted $600 per week into 2021.
Democrats
are also seeking $915 billion in financial aid for state and local governments
over two years, a staggering amount of money that the White House and Senate
Republicans said was unreasonable. Republicans offered $150 billion for one
year. That huge gap was a major area of disagreement.
There were
other important policy disputes — election security funding, money to reopen
schools and aid to renters and homeowners, among others.
“I said
come back when you're ready to give a higher number,” Pelosi said.
Perhaps
lost in the whole partisan dispute, however, was a sense of the scale of
government aid being talked about here. The late Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Ill.)
was famous for his line, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re
talking real money.” That’s a mere pittance in the current crisis.
“We come
down a trillion from our top number which was $3.4 [trillion.] They go up a
trillion, from their top number which was $1 [trillion], and that way, we could
begin to meet in the middle, Schumer said after the negotiations had collapsed.
“Unfortunately, they rejected it. They said they couldn't go much above their
existing $1 trillion, and that was disappointing.”
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