It's been 110 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up in the Senate, and it's 28 days until the government runs out of funding with the end of the fiscal year. Congress is still officially out on August recess, and right now the only thing that appears to be happening in the Senate is a plan by McConnell to do another fake coronavirus relief bill, a "skinny" bill that will be rejected by House Democrats and never be passed, anyway.
While he's wasting his time with that, there's been a bit of movement between Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mnuchin might be trying to take the reins back from Donald Trump’s nihilist chief of staff Mark Meadows. He testified Tuesday before the House select subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis and acknowledged that "While we continue to see signs of a strong economic recovery, we are sensitive to the fact that there is more work to be done, and certain areas of the economy require additional relief." That included more money for schools, testing, vaccines, the Postal Service, enhanced unemployment benefits, and another round of small business assistance. Mnuchin continued to take the hard line that they won't meet Pelosi halfway on that funding, at $2.2 trillion, but acknowledged that the crisis is ongoing and that it will have to be addressed. After last week's Republican National Convention in which the entire roster of speakers seemed intent on pretending like coronavirus was in the rearview mirror, that's something.
This also happened: The worst economist ever, Trump adviser Larry Kudlow, actually reversed everything said at the Republican convention and on Wednesday said, "Our job is not done. The pandemic, the virus is not over. There's a lot of hardship." This suggests that there's some outside pressure on the White House to do something. The two issues of coronavirus and government funding are now inextricably linked because there's just not going to be enough time to do one without the other by Sept. 30, and possibly because everyone knows Trump is unstable enough to try a government shutdown again.
After the hearing Tuesday, Mnuchin and Pelosi spoke. By her accounting, it was not a terribly productive discussion. "Sadly, this phone call made clear that Democrats and the White House continue to have serious differences understanding the gravity of the situation that America's working families are facing," she said. "House and Senate Democrats have repeatedly offered to compromise. Over a month ago, we said that we would be willing to cut a trillion dollars from the Heroes Act if the White House would add one trillion to the Senate bill. Last week, we said we would be willing to go down to $2.2 trillion."
So we're left with a few glimmers of hope. The first is that the White House is acknowledging that stimulus is still necessary, and even that the Postal Service needs funding. The second is that Mnuchin had this call with Pelosi and that going forward, Meadows might be left out. Mnuchin has been able to work with Pelosi and Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer in the previous negotiations that resulted in legislation actually passing. That's the hopeful side. The difficult side is a clearly unstable Trump, an obstructionist McConnell, and the threat of a government shutdown lurking at the end of the month.
