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“I think both sides say they want one, but both sides say they want the one they want,” Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri and executive on Capitol Hill, said on Monday. .
The election left the chances of passing another stimulus package uncertain, senators and congressional sources told CNN on Monday, with leading Republicans firmly committed to moving a massive package beyond $ 1 trillion. Democrats demand twice as much.
Meanwhile, Trump – who once called on Republicans to accept “a big, beautiful” stimulus in the hope that he would bolster his electoral outlook – is now consumed by the fallout from his defeat. Top White House stimulus negotiator Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has stepped back from the talks, and all eyes are on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who had been on the sidelines of the negotiations throughout the summer and fall.
“We need another bailout,” McConnell said last week in Kentucky. “I think we have to do it and I think we have to do it before the end of the year.”
Helpers on both sides who have spent months watching the negotiations say there is no sign of a deal looming on the horizon, even if the Senate’s balance is at stake. Both sides wait. Still instructions from their leaders on how to proceed and repeatedly failed talks left members unsure whether a deal could be reached when another spending deadline looms in December to maintain government funding. In fact, they argue that there are too many variables at this point to assess whether a deal is possible in the lame duck. On the one hand, with Mnuchin out of place, it remains to be wondered how far McConnell will take the stand and negotiate directly with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or whether Trump will be ready to sign a deal.
Aides says there is some hope that President-elect Joe Biden will assert himself in the negotiations as well as a way to start building a coalition with the GOP-controlled Senate. However, whether this alliance could be forged even before he was president, and with two notable Senate races in Georgia, it’s unclear.
The math for Republicans is whether a stimulus deal is needed to boost Georgia Republican Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. While several GOP senators have been re-elected from Maine to Montana without a bipartisan deal, the run-off is different, and GOP senators will not allow Trump to help generate a turnout at the top of the ticket. McConnell will have to try to give his Republican incumbents every possible advantage. But McConnell is still grappling with a conference that is completely opposed to a stimulus bill that costs well over $ 1 trillion. Anything over $ 1.5 trillion has been a red line for most of his conference members.
“You know Mitch said he wanted to do one. And I agree that we have to do it at a level that you know what we argued previously in the Senate, which is very different from what the Chamber has tried to do … It must be focused on getting people back to work to get children to school safely and to get the virus behind us, ”Senator John Barrasso, a Republican of Wyoming.
There are only a few weeks left before Congress must find a way to maintain government funding. That deadline – December 11 – will likely take up a lot of the Appropriators’ time. And while some believe lawmakers might combine a stimulus with a spending bill, many wizards point out that there are still many differences between public and local funding, the size of the stimulus, and the amount of insurance. – unemployment which should be increased at federal level.
“It might not be a bad idea if we can agree on the stimulus,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Dick Shelby, a Republican from Alabama, told reporters.
Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, told reporters there was a “compelling argument” for a new COVID bill, but not one that was the size Democrats were aiming for.
“I don’t know what the magic number is. But it’s not zero and it’s not $ 3 trillion,” Cornyn said.
CNN’s Ali Zaslav and Ted Barrett contributed to this report.
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