It's been 174 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, and 36 days since the House passed a compromise $2.2 trillion bill, both of which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up and vote on. Three days after the election, we're pretty much where we were before the election when it comes to getting stimulus funds out to a hurting country. Except for the part where we're setting new daily records for COVID-19 infections.
The day after the election, McConnell said that state and local aid could be a part of the package, getting hopes up everywhere that perhaps he would start bending toward reality and the nation's needs to work with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "We need another rescue package. The Senate goes back into session next Monday. Hopefully the partisan passions that prevented us from doing another rescue package will subside with the election. And I think we need to do it and I think we need to do it before the end of the year,” McConnell said unashamedly. As if it wasn't his partisanship that prevented real stimulus from passing months ago. "It's a possibility we will do more for state and local governments," he added. He's been staunchly opposing that aid up until now.
On Friday, he demolished hopes that he was going to be turning a page, arguing that a less-than-disastrous (but still bad) jobs report argued that they really don't need to do anything big.
"Our economy is really moving to get back on its feet. That I think clearly ought to affect what size of any rescue package we additionally do," he said, speaking to reporters in Kentucky. "I do think we need another one, but I think it reinforces the argument that I've been making for the last few months that something smaller—rather than throwing another $3 trillion at this issue—is more appropriate, with it highly targeted towards things that are directly related to the coronavirus, which we all know is not going away until we get a vaccine." That's completely ignoring the resurgence of the virus all over the country and the prospects of an extremely grim winter.
Asked if she would consider a smaller package, Pelosi was firm."No, no, it doesn't appeal to me at all because they still have not agreed to crush the virus," Pelosi said. "That isn't anything that we should even be looking at, it wasn't the right thing to do before," she added. With Trump now a lame duck, the only way anything happens from that side is if Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin continues to give a damn about the health of the economy and tries again. That would require a Donald Trump that was paying any attention to anything at all besides his grievances. Which is not likely.
Trump is going to wash his hands of this. It's going to be up to McConnell, who is going to be more focused on jamming through all the judges he possibly can, and trying to figure out how to keep Georgia Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock out of the Senate. There is a Dec. 11 government funding deadline that could help drive some kind of added action on relief—maybe. "We want the Republicans to come back to the table," Pelosi said. "The imperative to act could not be greater."