It's been 138 days since the House passed the $3 trillion HEROES Act, which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused to take up, and at midnight Wednesday, the government runs out of funding with the end of the fiscal year. The election is in 33 days. The Senate should take care of government funding Wednesday by passing the continuing resolution the House passed last week. The White House hasn't said anything about a veto, so we can breathe on that front until Dec. 11, when this bill expires. We're trying not to think about the hornet's nest that could be poking, since that's the same week the states are deciding electors (Dec. 8) and the electors vote (Dec. 14).
But that nightmare is two-and-a-half months away. We'll set it aside to consider the last-ditch preelection push for coronavirus stimulus from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. The House will vote Wednesday evening on the bill they introduced Monday, while talks between Pelosi and Mnuchin, and between Mnuchin and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, continue.
"We're going to be here Thursday," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said, waiting to see how Mnuchin does with McConnell. "We'll have to see. If we have an agreement, we're going to pass that agreement, then we're done until after the election. It's hard to say when we're going to leave." Mnuchin and Pelosi met for about an hour-and-a-half in person Wednesday, the first face-to-face meetings in weeks. That apparently went well enough for Mnuchin then to head over to meet with McConnell, though Pelosi was cautious in her assessment. "We found areas where we are seeking further clarification. Our conversation will continue," she said in a statement. She said that the House vote Wednesday night will "formalize" their offer to the White House and Senate.
"We made a lot of progress over the last few days," Mnuchin said after the meeting. "We still don't have an agreement, but we have more work to do. And we're gonna see where we end up." Mnuchin told reporters the White House had a $1.5 trillion proposal that includes trigger mechanisms based on the hospitalization rate from the disease and possibly vaccine development that could add another $400 billion in aid, bringing the total closer to the $2.2 trillion in the House bill. The White House offer includes expanded unemployment benefits, but it's not clear if it's as much as the $600/week the House has included, and another round of $1,200 direct payments to every adult. It also has about $500 billion allocated to state and local governments. The House bill is down to $436 billion, so that shouldn't be a point of contention with Pelosi and Mnuchin.
McConnell, however, is another matter. Mnuchin is backing McConnell up on his insistence that there be, in Mnuchin's words, "reasonable liability protection, both for schools and small businesses" against coronavirus-related lawsuits. What McConnell considers "reasonable" and what Democrats might consider "reasonable" is a potentially big problem. McConnell's first response was to douse any hope of relief to millions of struggling Americans. "It's safe to say we’re far apart," McConnell said. "The thought that Senate Republicans would go up to $2.2 trillion is outlandish."
But if it's $1.9 trillion and Trump really wants to send checks to every American before the election? That might make the calculation for McConnell—and for the handful of Republican senators who really want to still have jobs come January—different.