Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scheduled a vote Monday to try again to advance a $2 trillion stimulus plan after Republicans and Democrats failed to engineer a quick jolt to a sinking economy amid the rising coronavirus death toll, plunging financial markets and dire predictions of a deep recession. #Coronavirus #Covid19 #CoronavirusUSA
The Senate will take a vote at about about 1:30 p.m. Washington time aimed at getting the legislation to the floor. But the chamber’s Republican majority can’t do it without the votes of Democrats.
“Why are the American people still waiting?” McConnell said on the Senate floor before scheduling the vote. “The markets are not doing well today.”
Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said he has had “almost continuous negotiations” with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Sunday and Monday. He said they are close to reaching a deal and his goal is to do so Monday.
While many details of the plan had been hashed out, some fundamental differences hadn’t been bridged. The recriminations began immediately after McConnell’s first bid for a procedural vote failed Sunday.
An incensed McConnell on Monday cited plummeting stock markets to express the urgency to act Monday, and the Kentucky Republican ripped Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
He accused Democrats of pushing for unrelated “wish-list items” such as solar energy tax credits and new emission standards for airlines. “This is the moment to debate new regulations that have nothing whatsoever to do with this crisis?” McConnell said.
On Sunday, Schumer complained that McConnell’s bill was partisan. He said it amounts to “a large corporate bailout” with insufficient oversight and shortchanges the health-care response to the pandemic. He said there should be “much more money” for hospitals for equipment that is rapidly becoming in short supply.
President Donald Trump sounded an optimistic note after Sunday’s failed vote, saying, “I think we’ll get there.” But there signs that he was growing frustrated with the broader situation in the country. Trump began talking privately late last week about reopening the nation because he’s worried about the economic damage from an extended shutdown, according to people familiar with his thinking.
Senators from each party said Monday they expected a deal. In one potential sign of movement, Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, Senators have agreed to provide funding for an accountability board for the $500 billion bailout fund. That’s a key Democratic demand, but the details had yet to be worked out.
“I don’t see that there is yet final agreement on the language of what is the scope of that accountability board,” he said on Bloomberg Television. Negotiations were ongoing Monday morning, he said.
Financial markets have been roiled by the impact of the pandemic as it forces businesses to shutter and governments to keep people inside. The S&P 500 dropped at the open Monday, and the index has now erased almost all gains accrued during Trump’s presidency.
McConnell at one point threatened to use the market turmoil to force the hand of Democrats, saying he would schedule another procedural vote for 9:45 a.m. Monday, “15 minutes after the markets open, and see if there’s a change of heart.” The Senate later adjourned until noon.
The prospect of an election-year market meltdown will revive memories for many lawmakers of the standoff over the bank rescue plan amid the 2008 financial crisis.
In September of that year, the House unexpectedly rejected President George W. Bush’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan to bail out banks in the wake of the subprime mortgage collapse and to restore confidence in credit markets. The defeat was the result of a revolt by rank-and-file Republicans against their own president and it sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average down almost 7 percent.
McConnell and then-Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid worked to usher it through the Senate on a solid 74-25 majority two days later. Then on Oct. 3, the House reversed and narrowly cleared the legislation and sent it to Bush for his signature.
Until Sunday’s procedural vote on the stimulus plan, Republicans insisted that an agreement with Democrats was close to fruition.
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