It's been 158 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, and 20 days since the House passed their compromise $2.2 trillion bill, both of which Mitch McConnell has refused to take up. It is 13 days until the election and McConnell and the White House are disputing whether he told the White House to back off a deal so he had time before the election to jam an extremist onto the Supreme Court.
Reporting from The New York Times makes it clear. With the possibility of a deal coming early next week, four Republicans confirmed to the Times, McConnell said that "he told the White House he was particularly concerned that a deal before then could inject unwanted unpredictability into the schedule." Meanwhile, McConnell's home state of Kentucky has "restarted preparations to expand hospital capacity as it struggles to overcome another surge in the coronavirus outbreak, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday." They reported the fourth highest single day total, 1,312 new cases, since the pandemic began. McConnell's priority remains Barrett, and that's putting him at loggerheads with Trump. The White House wants a deal in the next two days, and this is coming from the deal-breaker, chief of staff Mark Meadows.
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"The last 24 hours have moved the ball down the field," Meadows said on Fox Business Wednesday morning. The goal is "some kind of deal in the next 48 hours or so." He also said "There was no warning from Leader McConnell. My conversations with the Leader have been very robust and continue onto this date. We're looking at the options." If Trump wants a deal, the White House expects McConnell to help deliver it, Meadows suggested. "If there's a bipartisan deal, I believe there would be enough votes there to make sure that we get that across the finish line and to the President's desk."
That means McConnell has to come up with the votes. Trump even said so. McConnell "will be on board if something comes," Trump said on Fox Tuesday. Then he repeated his demand that they spend even more than the $2.2 trillion Democrats have asked for. "I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats. And not every Republican agrees with me, but they will," Trump said. So there, Mitch.
The negotiations between Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are by all accounts moving forward. Meadows indicated Wednesday that they "have entered a new phase, which is more on the technical side of trying to get the language right if we can agree on the numbers." Which sounds like progress. In a letter to House Democrats, Pelosi said "I remain hopeful that we can reach an agreement before the election. It will be safer, bigger, and better, and it will be retroactive." That's the first hint that it would be retroactive, not just resuming things like the $600/week bump to unemployment insurance, but possibly covering that back to the end of July, when the CARES Act expired.
There is still a long way to go, because House Republicans and McConnell don't want to give Pelosi anything, and McConnell would just as soon let the nation continue to suffer if it could make the first months of a Biden presidency that much harder, with an even deeper economic disaster. But his vulnerable Republicans are being put in a position of sticking with him and opposing Trump—alienating Trump voters—or going home in the days before the election with a lot of money for their states.
