Senators and congressional staff are meeting Friday to work on the next phase of coronavirus stimulus in a process that puts a whole bunch of staffers, administration personnel, and congressional leadership in rooms together to negotiate, against all Centers for Disease Control recommendations, and makes Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's goal of having a bill ready for a vote on Monday questionable.
McConnell's goal seems to be ramming through the inadequate plan introduced Thursday night by forcing Democrats to act on a bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer have said it "not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers." He could be attempting to jam them through, but has a lot of work to even get his full Republican conference on board. Roll Call reports that at this point, it's not "even clear how strongly the Trump administration supported the Senate GOP bill, which offers cash payments to families, loans to struggling industries and help for small businesses and hospitals, among other things."
The cash payments are the first problem. Even the conservative American Enterprise Institute seems cool on the proposal in the first draft of the bill: one-time payments of $1,200 to individuals and $2,400 to couples with $500 for each child, that start to decrease on people with taxable income of $75,000 and stop at $99,000. People who don't make enough money to pay taxes would get less, starting at about $600. Calculations from AEI say that "an individual would have to earn at least $23,000 to get the full $1,200 amount, while joint filers would need to make $47,000 to get the full $2,400." The AEI analysis found that "64 million tax filers earning under $50,000 won't get the full credit."
That's not much assistance to the people who need it most, and considering it’s a one-time payment, not all that helpful compared to what this potentially months-long crisis will do to wreck family finances. Even Republican Sen. Mitt Romney says it's not good enough. "The current bill has promise but it shouldn’t give lower earners smaller checks—that's directly contrary to my proposal," he said. "We need to work together to get something big and bold that helps the American people. This is one of the worst crises we've faced, and we must act together quickly and strongly." Extreme conservative Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri agrees. "Relief to families in this emergency shouldn’t be regressive. Lower-income families shouldn’t be penalized."
Going into the negotiations Friday, Schumer told reporters that "Senator McConnell's bill is not pro-worker at all. It puts corporations ahead of people. We need workers first." He laid out what has to be in the bill: a "Marshall Plan" for hospitals; full unemployment insurance "so that when you're laid off you get paid your full salary and you can get on unemployment quickly, and it's not just a one-time payment"; and paid family leave and paid sick leave. He said "we are not going to go for any bailouts unless they are worker-friendly. The money goes to workers, employees, and no stock buybacks."
Any bill that passes will require Democratic buy-in, period. That’s not going to happen by Monday. McConnell can't pretend that taking action is so urgent that this has to be done his way—not after he delayed the last bill for days while he politicked with Brett Kavanaugh in Kentucky. And not while his Republican senators are personally profiting from the crisis.