It's been 116 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which Sen. Mitch McConnell has refused to take up, and in 22 days the government runs out of funding with the end of the fiscal year. While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have jointly declared they will work to avoid a government shutdown, it's unclear they have any allies in the White House or Republican Senate.
McConnell has been spending all his time negotiating with the other 52 Republicans in the Senate, trying to come up with a coronavirus relief package that satisfies the Chamber of Commerce and does just enough to make it look like vulnerable Republican senators did something to satisfy voters. So he's got a skinny relief bill (he prefers to call it "targeted") that he's pushing to the floor "as soon as this week." It's even less than the $1 trillion HEALS Act that landed with a thud back in July, and will not pass in the Senate. But he thinks he's hurting Democrats and helping Republicans with it, and that’s all that matters to him. Not the millions of people desperate for assistance, not the raging pandemic, not increasing unemployment. Politics.
It includes $300/week in added unemployment insurance payments, ending arbitrarily on Dec. 27—we're not going to be out of the pandemic or the economic crisis before the new year, but again, McConnell doesn't care. It also allows businesses to take a second bite at the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and turns $10 billion held by Treasury for the U.S. Postal Service to receive as a loan into a straight-across grant should it become necessary, as well as $105 billion for reopening schools and $45 billion for coronavirus-related health matters, including vaccine and treatment development and distribution, testing, and contact tracing. (Disclosure: Kos Media received a Paycheck Protection Program loan.) It, of course, includes the Chamber's liability shield for schools and businesses that might negligently infect workers and customers with the coronavirus. To try to save Sen. Joni Ersnt in Iowa, it might include $20 billion for farmers or other sweeteners to try to get majority Republican support. The Republican vote sweeteners are poison pills for Democrats.
The House has already approved $25 billion for the Postal Service with a special session vote in August. As well as the $3 trillion HEROES Act all those months ago. This bill will go nowhere with Democrats. "In May, while the American people and small businesses were crying out for help in dealing with a pandemic and recession, Sen. McConnell dismissed their needs, saying that Senate Republicans would 'take a pause' and 'wait and see,'" Pelosi and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement released in response to McConnell's announcing this bill. "Now, after months of inaction, Republicans are finally realizing the damage their pause has done to the American economy and our nation's health." They call McConnell out: "If anyone doubts McConnell's true intent is anything but political, just look at the bill. This proposal is laden with poison pills Republicans know Democrats would never support.
"This emaciated bill is only intended to help vulnerable Republican Senators by giving them a 'check the box' vote to maintain the appearance that they're not held hostage by their extreme right-wing that doesn't want to spend a nickel to help people," they continue. That pretty much describes McConnell's effort. Even the White House is ignoring this—Mnuchin is willing to go up to $1.5 trillion on the next aid package and has begun tentative talks with Pelosi, once again shutting McConnell out of the process. The threat McConnell has now is with government funding. There's been talk among Republican aides of an effort to link a continuing resolution to fund the government to coronavirus spending. Pelosi and Mnuchin have rejected that ploy, but McConnell is enough of a hostage-taker to be willing to try it.
It all depends on how much sway the cadre of Republican senators who have very real fears about their reelection have with McConnell. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy from Connecticut spoke to that: "It's still so hard for me to imagine Mitch McConnell packing up the Senate for the election home stretch having not even tried to negotiate in good faith," he told Politico. "I've stubbornly stuck to this idea that Republican senators at the very least will be driven to get something done by their fear of backlash from voters."
We'll see, but probably not for another week or 10 days. Meanwhile, McConnell's making the Senate do what he really cares about: judicial nominations.
