With Senate republicans in disarray and the White House impotent to garner support, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that he will present a “skinny” coronavirus relief bill when the Senate reconvenes next Monday, the Associated Press reports.
McConnell vowed that the bill will get a vote on the floor of the Senate in October, but the bill has absolutely no chance of passage due to opposition on both sides of the aisle.
The bill McConnell supports would only address a small fraction of the issues facing American in the age of coronavirus. It’s a rehash of a bill rejected by the Senate and the White House in September, which didn’t provide aid to fiscally strapped state and local governments, extend federal unemployment supplemental payments and provide a $1,200 direct payment to Americans.
The White House, facing the final weeks of a reelection campaign for President Trump that is not going in Trump’s favor, desperately wants checks distributed to families before the election, a remote–if not impossible–federal act at this point.
McConnell complains that Democrats, who passed a second round of relief in the House back in May, don’t want to support legislation that only partly addresses issues.
“Democrats have spent months blocking policies they do not even oppose. They say anything short of their multi-trillion-dollar wish list, jammed with non-COVID-related demands, is ‘piecemeal’ and not worth doing,” McConnell said in a statement. “And [Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi] has worked hard to ensure that nothing is what American families get.”
That’s not true. Pelosi has been working with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to come up with a compromise proposal. However, Trump has sabotaged that process by tweeting that he was canceling all negotiations seven days ago, only to then tweet that he wanted stimulus checks and airline aid in the ensuing days.
On Tuesday morning, Trump tweeted that he wanted a stimulus bill bigger than even the $2.4 trillion proposal put forth by Democrats. “Go big or go home!” Trump tweeted.
Talks between Mnuchin and Pelosi broke down today, perhaps because Mnuchin doesn’t know what the White House position is at this time.