Today Congress moved in an orderly disciplined way to resolve the two major conflicts delaying the immediate passage of a new coronavirus stimulus and relief bill modeled on the $908 billion bi-partisan proposal floating last week.
Just kidding!
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell continues to refuse to endorse the $908 billion package and today offered up a new proposal to eliminate his demand to exempt companies from legal liability for coronavirus damages (say, if they lied to workers about infections in their workplace) in exchange for Democrats dropping their insistence of $160 billion of so in aid for states and cities. “It’s my view, and I think it’s the view shared by literally everybody on both sides of the aisle, that we can’t leave without doing a Covid bill,” McConnell said at a news conference. “The country needs it.”
Democrats weren’t having any of McConnell’s “compromise.” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said leaving out state and local aid would hurt essential workers across the nation, including police officers and firefighters, who face job losses if states and cities have to cut budgets to make up for shortfalls in revenue caused by the pandemic. “Leader McConnell has refused to be part of the bipartisan negotiations,” Schumer said at his own news conference. “And now he’s sabotaging good faith, bipartisan negotiations because his partisan ideological effort is not getting a good reception.”
Meanwhile, White House officials have been talking with Republican leaders to include payments to individuals of $600 or more in any plan. President Donald Trump has indicated a willingness to boost that to as much as $2,000. The bipartisan proposal doesn’t include any payments to individuals although it does include expanded unemployment benefits,
