It's been 139 days since the House passed the $3.4 trillion HEROES Act, which Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. To put an exclamation point on that, and on the ongoing critical need for assistance to America, the House passed a slimmed-down version at $2.2 trillion.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been every day this week, sometimes multiple times a day. They have not come to agreement, and the House vote is either a nudge to try to make the negotiations continue or the House's final word on the issue before the election. But a new wrinkle happened on Thursday—some vulnerable Republican senators finally broke, expressing their concern that they'd be going home at some point this month without having done anything to help. They didn't say so, but they all have to be thinking that prioritizing an extremist Supreme Court judge for the primary purpose of giving Trump a friendly court for an election challenge while not doing anything to save the nation's health or economy won't go over well with voters.
It's got to be occurring to at least a few of them. "There's no reason we shouldn't all be here until the election if that's what it takes to pass a follow up to the CARES Act," said Sen. Thom Tillis who is facing a serious challenge from Democrat Cal Cunningham, who also happened to have a monster fundraising quarter. As did almost every Democratic challenger in Senate races. So it doesn't come as a surprise that Sen. Susan Collins is concerned "I do not think we should recess without a coronavirus package," she said. "We're not that far apart."
You want fear? Texas Sen. John Cornyn facing challenger MJ Hegar, said he's worried a vaccine "will be delayed because of the lack of funds because of no deal." And from Georgia, Sen David Perdue who is barely leading challenger Jon Ossoff said "This should've been done three weeks ago. […] Yeah, I'm very frustrated by that. Mnuchin and [Pelosi] have been talking this week about some sort of compromise. […] I'm hopeful. We're coming back next week, and frankly, I don't think we should leave until we get it done."
None of them, however, were willing to point the finger of blame at the person who most deserves it: their leader Mitch McConnell. He's the one who refuses to move any legislation unless he has a majority of his conference in agreement, and he has very loud senators like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ron Johnson who fight against doing anything to help anybody. McConnell uses them as his excuse not to act.
Thursday's vote doesn't mean this is over. “We'll see where we go from there tonight, but I've spoken to him a number of times already,” Pelosi told, saying that she is still reviewing his latest offer. "Even if we came to some agreement, nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to—it's the language."