“I think both parties want to get out of here and campaign,” Shelby told reporters Wednesday afternoon.
Rather than digging in for more negotiations on a deal to combat the health and economic crises from the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers returned to the Capitol this week intent on playing out the string before hitting a predictable deadlock over a fifth major pandemic rescue package.
That next step happened Thursday afternoon, when a bare majority of Senate Republicans — 52 — supported what GOP backers called a “skinny” relief package and Democrats dubbed an anemic effort to meet such critical global crises. Without Democratic support, the GOP legislation died from a filibuster, and each side blamed the other for its demise.
The next few weeks will likely include various acts meant to portray the talks as ongoing, but, as only Shelby can say, the deal is “not going to happen” unless there is some major, unforeseen breakthrough.
The veteran lawmakers are just focused on the Sept. 30 deadline to approve what insiders call a “continuing resolution” to keep federal agencies funded at this year’s levels — and the objective is to do that as quickly as possible, with few hiccups, so lawmakers can return home and campaign for their own elections.
“CR is the next order of big business to do. And the cleaner the better, the quicker,” Shelby, the Appropriations Committee chairman, said.
The deadlock is driven by two factors, each of critical importance. First, Republicans and Democrats remain more than $1 trillion apart in their respective offers for a relief package. And, second, time has run out — there are less than 10 full days remaining this month when the House and Senate are both in session, and everyone agrees lawmakers will be sent home soon after the government is funded.
So, rather than setting up more negotiations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) pulled together his “skinny” package that contains $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits to replace a $600 weekly benefit that expired July 31 for some 30 million jobless workers.
It also includes more than $100 billion for schools and colleges to prepare to safely bring students and teachers back to classrooms and to expand the popular Paycheck Protection Program. But it has no money for a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks for individual Americans nor funds to help economically hard-hit cities and states.
GOP senators are now openly admitting that this is not a serious effort at restarting talks, which collapsed in early August after many fruitless meetings led by Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Instead, this is more of a political messaging bill that endangered Republicans can cite in their campaigns.
“I hate to give up on the fact that we’re not going to get this done,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of McConnell’s leadership team, said Wednesday. But, Blunt explained, this skinny bill gives those incumbents something to talk about. “It’s not the boat I’d like to have. But I hope it’s helpful to them because they’ve all been trying to work hard to get to a conclusion.”
Democrats decry the lack of any real aid to state and local governments, whose revenue streams collapsed during the economic shutdown and could soon lay off municipal workers and police and firefighters. On the eve of the vote Sen. Doug Jones (Ala.), who faces an uphill climb to reelection in his heavily conservative state, was the only Democrat openly discussing supporting McConnell’s proposal.
In late July, when a deal still seemed possible, conservatives revolted against McConnell’s initial $1 trillion offer to Pelosi, abandoning Trump and drawing a line in the sand against such a big price tag. Without enough backing, McConnell never brought his bill to the floor and allowed Mnuchin, with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at his side, talk with Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).
When those talks collapsed a month ago, McConnell began compiling a pared back proposal mostly meant to give Republicans in tough reelection battles something to tout, even though it has no chance of becoming law. With no chance for passing an actual law, conservatives signaled they would lend McConnell a hand on this one vote.
“Yeah, I’m gonna support it,” Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) told reporters Tuesday, explaining in vague terms why he dropped his previous opposition. “There were some elements that were important to me that made it into this. It got scaled back down, which I thought was important. So, on balance, I will vote in favor of cloture.”
Cloture is the first procedural vote to try to defeat the Democratic filibuster, and Toomey made clear that it is an easier vote for conservatives because they know that it will fail.
“That’s the vote,” he said.
Both McConnell and Pelosi placed bets that did not pan out, driving the two sides further apart politically rather than forcing them back to the bargaining table.
After the Pelosi-Mnuchin talks broke down, lawmakers went home and waited to see if there was an uprising demanding more relief, with Republicans expecting several dozen first-term House Democrats to clamor for some sort of deal out of fear that their reelection would be endangered without some compromise.
Instead, those freshmen dug in fully behind Pelosi’s position for a more than $2 trillion package that would fully deal with the crises. “Unless you have a bill that addresses both components of that and does it simultaneously, then we’re not keeping fidelity with the taxpayer,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who flipped a longtime GOP seat two years ago, told The Washington Post’s Erica Werner in a telephone interview Wednesday.
Crow is in a safer position than a couple dozen Democrats heading into November, but counts among his closest friends freshmen in districts that Trump won in 2016. These Democrats are not budging toward a proposal that is only a fraction of the more than $3 trillion Heroes Act that they voted for in May.
“I think that that’s the broad recognition right here. And I think that’s why it’s important that we keep on pushing for a comprehensive proposal,” Crow said.
And Senate Republicans returned this week still seeing huge approval for the Cares Act, the more than $2 trillion relief packaged that Congress approved in late March, and they believe that they can campaign on PPP and other elements of that bill.
Right or wrong, Republicans have placed a political bet that they do not need to prop up the reeling economy anymore and instead hope that voters will be patient and wait for a vaccine to come to wipe out the virus.
“I think people are gonna be looking at, ‘Alright, who’s the best to restore the economy once we get a vaccine? You know, who can rebuild it?’ Because the virus one day will have a vaccine,” Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who flew with Trump Tuesday to Florida and North Carolina, said.
