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Coronavirus talks on life support as parties dig in, pass blame

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The White House and congressional Democrats warned Thursday night that they remain far apart on coronavirus relief, raising new doubts that they can reach a …
The White House and congressional Democrats warned Thursday night that they remain far apart on coronavirus relief, raising new doubts that they can reach a consensus on sweeping legislation to address the public health crisis and the economic devastation it has caused. The four key negotiators — Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin,White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N. Y.) — emerged from a more than three-hour meeting in the Capitol with significant policy differences unresolved despite a self-imposed end-of-the-week deadline. To hear each side tell the tale, the other is to blame. “We understand where we are and where they are…. I think there’s a lot of issues we are close to a compromise position on, but I think there’s a handful of very big issues that we are still very far apart,” Mnuchin said. Schumer said Democrats had asked Mnuchin and Meadows “to meet us in the middle,” and the GOP negotiators refused. “They said, ‘No, it has to be mostly in our direction,’ ” Schumer said. “They were unwilling to meet in the middle.” Schumer declined to provide specifics surrounding the Democrats’ offer, but Pelosi suggested it was related to the timeline governing the various benefits on the table, not a reduction in the size or scope of those benefits over the near-term. “If we need to cut back on some of the timing to reduce the cost, we can do that,” she said, in what represents a new concession from Democrats. “But our priorities don’t go away.” Meadows countered that it was Republicans who had offered “significantly greater” compromises than Democrats, whom he accused of not being “serious” about wanting a deal. President Trump is “coming to the realization that perhaps some of our Democrats, both in the House in the Senate, are not serious about compromise and are not serious about trying to meet the needs of the American people,” he said.

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