Donald Trump met with Republican congressional leadership and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Monday, and the participants all laid out for members of the press corps just how little they intend to do in the next 10 days to save the American people and economy from ongoing coronavirus fallout. It started, as usual, with a lie from Trump. "[W]e're working and negotiating with the Democrats on trying to get a plan that helps small businesses, helps people, helps this country," he said. They are not. Democrats have been shut out of this process, as Mnuchin admitted immediately after Trump said that.
"[Chief of staff] Mark [Meadows] and I have been working very hard over the last two weeks, with Mitch [McConnell] and Kevin [McCarthy], on really what we see as the focus is kids and jobs," Mnuchin said. By kids, he means forcing schoolchildren back into classrooms and by jobs, he means forcing people back into unsafe workplaces. Later on he added "kids and jobs and vaccines. We're going to make sure that we have a vaccine by the end of the year for emergency use." Because that can be done by presidential fiat, apparently—after all the teachers and children have been sent back to school and infected their entire families. Mnuchin said the starting point for the bill would be $1 trillion, which is about $9 trillion short of what's necessary, but a rebuke to McConnell who had been insisting previously that it would have to remain in the billions. Mnuchin said they will “make sure that before the enhanced unemployment insurance expires [at the end of July], that we pass legislation so that we can protect Americans that are unemployed."
The extent to which they will agree to do that is not clear. The enhanced unemployment benefits end on July 25. Mnuchin says they're working on a "technical fix on enhanced unemployment," so there's every possibility that it will remain, but not at the $600/week level that's allowing the unemployed to stay afloat as prices for essentials rise and the pandemic continues with no end in sight and no intention on the part of the administration to do anything to make it end (except declare there will be a vaccine by the end of the year).
Among the other non-starters for Democrats, who will have to pass this in the House for it to become law, is McConnell's insistence on liability protection, which is really the only thing he talked about Monday. "[I]f you’re looking for a theme here, think liability protection for those who have been trying to deal with the pandemic," he told reporters. "We don't need an epidemic of lawsuits on the heels of the pandemic we're already struggling with." That and Trump's insistence that there be a payroll tax cut, which will do nothing to stimulate the economy and will only harm Social Security.
The outlines of the Republican plan so far also include no new money for cities and states, but give local leaders more leeway on how the remains of the previously granted $150 billion can be spent. The state would get money for schools, which would include private schools—another flash point for Democrats—and would be dependent upon schools reopening, according to The Washington Post's inside sources. That's not going to pass muster with Democrats, either, who are still pushing the $3 trillion HEROES Act the House passed more than two months ago.
"Unfortunately, by all accounts the Senate Republicans are drafting legislation that comes up short in a number of vital areas, such as extending unemployment benefits or funding for rental assistance, hazard premium pay for frontline workers, or investments in communities of color being ravaged by the virus, and many other necessary provisions," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in a letter to his conference Monday. "Democrats will need to fight hard for these important provisions."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted that Congress will have to spend more, and spend it to keep people safe. She told reporters late last week that this bill "is about the survival of our economy. If we don't invest the money now, it'll be much worse," she said. "If we don't invest in further testing and getting the equipment to do it, it will be worse. If we don't put money in the pockets of the American people with their direct payments and unemployment insurance, it will be much worse."