Republicans are hunting for a backup plan on coronavirus relief as bipartisan negotiations tasked with finding a deal appear to be making no measurable progress.
The discussions come as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows have met every day this week with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) but are, in their own words, “nowhere close to deal” and “very far apart.”
With the clock ticking — the House was supposed to start a five-week break on Friday and the Senate on Aug. 7 — Senate Republicans and the White House are floating myriad alternative ideas as they try to figure out how to break the logjam.
Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, said that if they can’t get one large agreement, they’ll have to look for a “Plan B” — just don’t ask what that would be.
“I don’t think so at this point,” Thune said, asked if there was a consensus on what the alternative could be. “There are a lot of different ideas floating right now. Nobody has settled on anything. We’re just listening and seeing where things go.”
Republicans unveiled their own proposal on Monday after weeks of negotiations. But that package quickly faced steep headwinds, with several GOP senators pouring cold water on it and even President Trump calling it “semi irrelevant.”
Now, the president, top administration officials and Republican senators are floating everything from a pared-down package to an attempt to force a vote on a short-term extension of federal unemployment benefits, which are set to expire on Friday.
A previous relief package gave those getting unemployment insurance a $600 increase. Republicans want to lower the number, but with no action, the entire enhancement will disappear after this week.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) acknowledged that he has roughly 20 members who oppose the package and appeared to open the door to a smaller bill in hopes of getting a deal quickly.
“Well, I certainly hope not. Neither side would like for that to happen. … Many things around here happen at the last minute. This is only Wednesday, so hope springs eternal either on a broad basis or a more narrow basis to avoid an adverse impact on unemployment,” McConnell told “PBS NewsHour.”
Asked if he was seriously looking at either a small bill or a short-term option, he added, “We’re looking at all options.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who helped craft the GOP package, said he didn’t want to have to do a smaller deal but that “there’s a couple of crisis things that are coming up here next week.”
“One would be the unemployment ending, and obviously you know we want to continue that. … The other thing is the evictions are going to, the prohibition on evictions is going to end. And that’s going to be a hardship for a lot of people. And especially, it should be easy to reach some compromise on unemployment because I even heard … Leader Hoyer say that they can go below $600,” Grassley said, referring to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
The chatter about trying to put together a smaller bill, or even a short-term unemployment extension, gained steam this week when Trump appeared to endorse the effort.
“You got to work on the evictions so people don’t get evicted. You work on the payments to the people. The rest of it, we’re so far apart we don’t care,” Trump told reporters Wednesday as he left the White House.