Bipartisan talks aimed at finding a deal on a fifth coronavirus bill collapsed on Friday, all-but-guaranteeing Congress and the White House will not …
Bipartisan talks aimed at finding a deal on a fifth coronavirus bill collapsed on Friday, all-but-guaranteeing Congress and the White House will not be able to reach a compromise despite a steady uptick in cases and lingering economic aftershocks. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows met for less than two hours with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N. Y.) as part of a Hail Mary effort to revive the negotiations on a fifth coronavirus bill, which already appeared to be on life support. But they emerged with no progress. Instead, the GOP negotiators and Democratic leadership traded blame over the impasse, and the administration officials said they will recommend President Trump move forward with executive orders as soon as this weekend. Schumer and Pelosi said they doubled down on their offer to reduce their $3.4 trillion price tag in exchange for Republicans agreeing to raise their figure by $1 trillion, but were rebuffed. “They rejected it. They said they couldn’t go much above their existing $1 trillion,” Schumer said. “Meet us in the middle, God’s sake, please for the sake of America. Meet us in the middle, don’t say my way or no way, which is what they’re saying they don’t want to come off their number.” Trump in a tweet said Democrats were «only interested in bailout money for poorly run Democratic cities and states,» referring to a stalemate in the talks on aid to states. «We are going a different way,» he said, seemingly hinting at the executive action. Mnuchin, meanwhile, said that the Friday discussion, viewed as a last-ditch effort, was largely a rehash of their more than three-hour talk from Thursday night, underscoring how entrenched both sides are in their negotiating positions. “Unfortunately, we did not make any progress today and we discussed the same issues,” Mnuchin said. How the stalemate gets broken is unclear. Pelosi told the administration officials to return to the negotiating table when they are willing to up the price tag of a potential agreement. “I’ve told them, ‘come back when you are ready to give us a higher number,’ ” she said. Pelosi and Schumer, in a joint press conference before Friday’s meeting, said they had offered to drop their roughly $3.4 trillion top-line by $1 trillion, if the GOP negotiators would agree to raise their approximately $1 trillion package by a trillion.
