Pelosi Rejects McConnell Offer on Covid Relief

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Dems Reject McConnell Offer on Covid Relief

Lawmakers introduced a stopgap funding bill Tuesday that would fund the government until December 18, giving them another week to hash out a full-year bill as well as a relief package to boost the pandemic-ravaged economy. The House is expected to vote on the bill Wednesday, followed by the Senate.

Negotiations over the relief bill are still hung up on some basic issues, however.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday proposed to drop the two main stumbling blocks — liability protections for businesses, which Republicans want, and aid for state and local governments, which Democrats want.

“What’s the way forward? We know the new administration is going to be asking for another package. What I recommend is we set aside liability and set aside state and local and pass those things that we agree, on knowing full well we'll be back at this after the first of the year," McConnell said, referring to expectations that Congress would negotiate a new Covid-relief package once President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.

McConnell’s proposal was quickly rejected by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who charged that it would lead to job losses for essential workers like firefighters and police officers. “Leader McConnell has refused to be part of the bipartisan negotiations,” Schumer said. “And now he’s sabotaging good faith, bipartisan negotiations because his partisan ideological effort is not getting a good reception.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was also sharply critical of McConnell’s offer. “Leader McConnell's efforts to undermine good-faith, bipartisan negotiations are appalling,” Pelosi said in a statement. “What does Leader McConnell have against our heroes? Our health care workers, our first responders and other frontline workers have risked their lives to save lives. Now, Leader McConnell wants them to lose their jobs and our constituents to lose the essential services they provide. With vaccine distribution being administered by the states, state and local funding is central to our efforts to crush the virus.”

Among those working directly on the relief package, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has proposed a short-term liability shield, but his plan has not been embraced so far. Lawmakers including Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Angus King (I-ME) are reportedly continuing to work on a compromise on the question of liability.

A push for more checks: The $908 billion proposal from a bipartisan group of centrists that is serving as a general framework for the negotiations does not include direct payments for individuals, but White House officials on Tuesday pushed for the inclusion of $600 checks for most Americans — half the level provided by the Cares Act last spring.

President Trump has privately expressed support for providing as much as $2,000 per person, according to The Washington Post, which noted that the first round of payments included Trump’s name printed on the checks.

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have also called for another round of direct payments, saying they would oppose the relief bill if it fails to include them.

Congress Barrels Toward Veto Showdown With Trump

His time in office may be nearly over, but President Trump is headed for what may be a first: an attempt by Congress to override his veto.

Lawmakers are moving ahead with the $741 billion National Defense Authorization Act this week, despite Trump’s threat to veto the bill over its failure to remove legal protections for tech companies.

The House is expected to vote Tuesday on the annual defense policy bill, with the Senate following soon thereafter. On Tuesday morning, Trump reiterated a threat he has made several times before, referring to a specific provision of the Communications Decency Act that provides broad immunity to content posted on sites run by the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

“I hope House Republicans will vote against the very weak National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which I will VETO,” Trump tweeted. “Must include a termination of Section 230 (for National Security purposes) ...”

The president also referred to issues involving national monuments, troop levels overseas and 5G technologies, though it’s not clear if he was issuing a new set of demands for lawmakers to consider.

Veto by the numbers: Both the House and Senate passed earlier versions of the bill with veto-proof two-thirds majorities, but it’s not clear that Congress could provide the same margins this time around. The House Freedom Caucus said Tuesday that it supported the president’s veto threat, and the group’s roughly three dozen members could tilt the House vote in favor of a successful veto.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) signaled that he would not support an effort to override a veto. “I don’t believe Republicans, in our work with the president, always, that you vote to override a veto,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday.

Other Republicans called for lawmakers to support the bill. “The stronger the vote, the less chance of having to deal with a veto later,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (TX), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, told reporters Monday. “If somebody is going to vote no on a bill because of what’s not in it, that has nothing to do with it … that can’t be the standard,” Thornberry added.

Another veto option: Even if Congress is able to provide veto-proof majorities, Trump has another option for gumming up the works: the pocket veto. A president can simply refuse to sign a bill that lands on his desk, allowing the legislation to expire after 10 days (not including Sundays). Trump could take the route, forcing Congress to return to town after Christmas for another vote – a particularly challenging course during a pandemic.

Biden Outlines 3 Goals for Fighting Covid in First 100 Days

As the United States surpassed 15 million confirmed Covid-19 infections on Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden formally introduced key members of his health team and laid out three goals for combatting the pandemic during his first 100 days in office: “Masking. Vaccinations. Opening schools.”

Biden said that he the pandemic won’t end in his first 100 days, and he warned that “things may well get worse before they get better.” But he said he was confident that over his first 100 days, “we can change the course of the disease and change life in America for the better.”

To do that, he said, he would sign an executive order on his first day as president requiring masks in places where he can do so, including in federal buildings and during interstate travel on planes, trains and buses. And he reiterated that he would ask governors and mayors to require masks and ask the American public to wear masks for 100 days to help reduce the spread of the virus. “It’s not a political statement — it's a patriotic act,” he said.

Biden also said he and his team would get Americans at least 100 million Covid-19 vaccine shots in his first 100 days, calling on Congress to pass a $900 billion bipartisan Covid-relief package and provide the needed funding, warning that millions of Americans may otherwise have to wait months longer to get vaccinated.

“This will be one of the hardest and most costly operational challenges in our nation’s history,” he said. “Without urgent action by this Congress this month to put sufficient resources into vaccine distribution and manufacturing — which the bipartisan group is working on — there is a real chance that, after an early round of vaccinations, the effort will slow and stall.”

Biden added that getting students back in classrooms should be a national priority, again urging Congress to provide money toward the goal. “If Congress provides the funding we need to protect students, educators, and staff, and if states and cities put strong public health measures in place that we all follow, then my team will work to see that the majority of our schools can be open by the end of my first 100 days,” he said.

Becerra Faces Senate Fight

Biden’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, may be headed for a confirmation fight in the Republican-controlled Senate, as a number of GOP senators have already raised questions about his qualifications.

”I’m not sure what his Health and Human Services credentials are,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, according to Bloomberg News. “It’s not like Alex Azar who used to work for pharma and have a health-care background,” he said referring to the current HHS secretary.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called Becerra a “disaster” who is “unqualified” to lead the department. “I’ll be voting no, and Becerra should be rejected by the Senate,” he wrote on Twitter.

Republicans have signaled that they will delay hearings on Becerra’s nomination.

Biden on Tuesday praised Becerra’s track record. “Xavier spent his career fighting to expand access to health care, reduce racial health disparities, protect the Affordable Care Act, and take on powerful special interests who prey on and profit off people’s health — from opioid manufacturers to Big Tobacco,” he said.

Column of the Day: A Revolution in Thinking on Public Debt

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane writes that shifting economic thinking on public debt “borders on intellectual revolution.”

He explains:

“Government debt accumulation was once considered inherently risky: By competing with private investors for investible funds, it would trigger ruinous interest-rate spikes. The new consensus is that debt is, if not quite the proverbial free lunch, then such a good deal that the United States and its fellow industrialized democracies can’t afford not to borrow. And this applies not only to the covid-related crisis but also to the more normal times ahead. …

“Persuasive as it is, this rosy scenario would be even more convincing if economists could say exactly why interest rates are behaving as they are.

“For now, the prime suspect is a mismatch between abundant private savings around the world and scarce profitable opportunities for private investment — the latter of which, in turn, partly reflects slow labor supply growth in industrialized countries.

“Under such circumstances, holders of wealth see no alternative to parking their money with governments. There’s no private investment to ‘crowd out’; to the contrary, financial markets are actually signaling that the highest and best use of the funds may be a public one.”

Read the full column, including some implications for Social Security and Medicare, at The Washington Post.

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Pelosi Rejects McConnell Offer on Covid Relief