“We are very far apart. It’s most unfortunate.” That’s how Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi characterized her negotiations with the White House. It was typical of her often laconic style when she is in the driver’s seat. What she meant was that Donald Trump’s emissaries must be spending a lot of time smoking a crack pipe if they think she’s going to follow their directives.
White House officials and Democratic leaders ended a three-hour negotiation Thursday evening without a coronavirus relief deal or even a clear path forward, with both sides remaining far apart on critical issues.
“We’re still a considerable amount apart,” said White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows after emerging from the meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. President Trump called into the meeting several times, but they were unable to resolve key issues.
Pelosi called it a “consequential meeting” in which the differences between the two parties were on display.
“They didn’t take the virus seriously in the beginning, they’re not taking the consequences of the virus seriously at this time,” she said. “And that’s why it’s hard to come to terms.”
Pelosi knows that the country urgently needs the federal government to offer more relief from the ravages of the COVID-19 crisis, especially with the moratorium on evictions expiring at the end of July. There are more than 30 million Americans who are are relying on enhanced unemployment benefits, which have also expired. But the Republicans refuse to sign off on her House bill, so they now must convince her to provide something less all-encompassing. Yet, she’s feeling comfortable in her position.
Failure to reach a deal in the midst of a global pandemic just three months before an election could create major political issues for lawmakers. A group of endangered Senate Republicans whose elections in November could determine control of the chamber have expressed particular anxiety about the impasse.
The small-business Paycheck Protection Program will expire on Saturday, leading to more layoffs. Dealing with these lapses will cost money that Republican negotiators don’t want to spend.
Despite the weak economic conditions and the continued spread of the virus, a compromise has remained distant. In an interview on CNBC on Thursday, Pelosi said Republicans’ refusal to recognize the needs that exist in the country is standing in the way of getting an agreement.
“Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn,” Pelosi said. “That’s the problem. See, the thing is, they don’t believe in governance.”
Over in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is helpless. He doesn’t have the votes to pass anything unless it relies almost entirely on Democratic votes. That’s why Pelosi is just waiting for the White House to cave to her demands. She wants money for food stamps and childcare. She wants money for the post office, so it can handle all the ballots that will be cast by mail in the upcoming election. She wants generous unemployment benefits. She wants a huge package of aid for the states. And she doesn’t want to offer legal immunity against anyone getting sued for exposing their employees to the virus.
The Republicans’ best play is to give her what she wants, so she will either win substantively or politically. In fact, it’s possible she’ll get what she wants and also get the credit, although that’s usually too much to ask.
I think we (who are mostly sane) should consider the possibility that because most, perhaps all, of the Republican members of Congress are wealthy, most are white, and most are male, that they might be calculating that they, personally, will be ok if the entire economy melts down.
Perhaps they’d rather burn it all down and leave the incoming Democratic admin and Congress* a smoldering wreck that Biden et al. won’t be able to save by 2022 or even 2024.
*assuming the Russians and voter suppression don’t overwhelm fair voting
I said as much last week.
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She nails it and them with this. If we were talking a tax cut or some other break for the wealthy that would benefit most of them, it would have been done by now. As members of Congress and otherwise wealthy individuals, they have the wherewithal to weather the economic hurricane that may come. They could give a rat’s ass about the rest of us, including their own supporters who are too stupid to realize they’re throwing them under the bus as well. Irony of all, the woman they hate with the heat of a thousand suns is fighting to keep their asses alive.
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Looks like Drumpf is just going to sign some executive orders instead to extend a handful of benefits, although not sure where the money is supposed to come from – that’s the legislative branch’s lane. Guessing court challenges ahead. In the meantime, the GOP is in disarray, and with schools set to open or already opening, we’re probably on our way to another spike in cases. The economy doesn’t improve until the pandemic is under control. Seems easy to understand. Yet the GOP legislators and White House occupant refuse to get it.
Maybe we missed something. Could it be Trump wrote an executive order to suspend the constitution? And how does he suspend the payroll tax? Next thing you know he will just write an executive order to suspend social security or transfer all the funds to his favorite charity or something. What do we need congress for anyway? Especially the democrats.
Seems like rock-solid political analysis from this vantage point.
The problem for centrist Republicans is that now they need 17 votes to cut a deal with the Democrats. If at any point in the past 12 years a smaller faction (say, 5-8 GOP senators) had formed a Blue Dog-like caucus and used it to wield the balance of power (e.g., blocking federal judges, holding investigations, calling witnesses for Trump’s impeachment trail, forcing deals on the budget, on health care, on immigration, etc.), then the entire dynamic of national politics in general, and the Republican party in particular, would be different and there’d be a decent prospect of cutting a deal on the pandemic relief bill.
As it is, it’s hard to see how Senate Republicans come up with that many votes for *any* bill.
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