Democrats on Thursday quickly balked at the GOP’s latest attempt to jump-start stalled COVID-19 relief legislation, calling the new proposal inadequate.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, accused Senate Republicans of merely trying to “check the box” by passing a bill to pad their vulnerable members’ records before the November elections.
“(House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi and I have been attempting to negotiate with the White House on the next round of legislation to properly respond to the unprecedented health and economic crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been arduous,” he wrote in a letter to fellow Democrats.
“Republicans are now moving even further in the wrong direction. In the upcoming session, [Senate Majority Leader Mitch] McConnell and the White House may cut their original, inadequate, $1 trillion ’skinny’ bill in half,” he added.
Republicans met several times this week to craft a slimmed-down version of their $1 trillion proposal from July.
“We have a focused, targeted solution that we hope that the House would pass and the House would agree to,” Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican, told reporters about the package.
He said it left out several “unrelated” items pushed for by Mr. Schumer and Mrs. Pelosi.
The new GOP package will include an extra $300 per week in add-on federal unemployment benefits payments, which is an increase from the earlier proposal, but close to the amount President Trump put into place with an executive order last month, according to a source familiar with the legislation.
A larger draft of the proposal, first reported by ABC News, had an additional $258 billion for renewing the small business Paycheck Protection Program, $29 billion for vaccine research, $16 billion for testing and contact tracing, and $105 billion for schools.
The proposal has not been publicly released, giving senators room to tweak the details. They are eyeing a vote next week and the text should come soon.
The proposal is not expected to get the 60 votes it needs to pass, however, because Democrats likely will block the bill.
Several Republicans said they’re hoping to get 51 members to sign on, just two shy of a unanimous GOP consensus in the chamber.
Getting those votes lined up would be a much stronger show of unity than in July when a significant portion of the conference pushed back against the high price tag.
If they succeed in getting party unity on the skinny bill, Republicans expect to hammer Democrats for blocking the measure and ramp up the pressure by highlighting vulnerable House Democrats in swing districts that pushed their leadership for additional COVID-relief legislation last month.
Talks between Democratic leaders and White House negotiators, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, collapsed in August after being unable to find a middle ground between the GOP’s $1 trillion plan and Democrats’ $3 trillion.
Both parties say they remain hundreds of billions of dollars apart on how much to spend on state and local governments. Democrats, also, remain focused on keeping the enhanced unemployment benefit at $600 a week.
There’s been some conversation between the two sides since mid-September but they remain at an impasse.
“Sadly, this phone call made clear that Democrats and the White House continue to have serious differences understanding the gravity of the situation that America’s working families are facing,” Mrs. Pelosi said Tuesday after the latest round of fruitless talks with Mr. Mnuchin.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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