WASHINGTON (CN) — Relief for Americans walloped by the Covid-19 pandemic remains elusive, but Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told lawmakers on Wednesday that a Republican proposal that has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill has President Donald Trump’s support.
“The president will sign the McConnell proposal that he put forward yesterday,” Mnuchin told members of the House Financial Services Committee during a hearing this morning on oversight of the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. “We look forward to making progress on that.”
The proposal is a still-developing framework for relief that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell rolled out just 24 hours ago to GOP leadership like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
McConnell’s plan earmarks roughly $330 billion for small business assistance and about $257 billion for the federal Paycheck Protection Program. The Treasury, under McConnell’s offering, would also extend a $10 billion loan to the U.S. Postal Service and infuse $100 billion for education programs. Approximately $47 million would be spread out for Covid-19 testing, contact tracing, vaccine development, and distribution and therapeutics. Many of these funds would be restructured from an unspent pool of money left over from the $2.2 trillion stimulus package passed by Congress this spring.
There was no discussion from lawmakers or Mnuchin during Wednesday’s hearing of a bipartisan proposal announced on Monday that calls for $908 billion in aid. That proposal featured an allocation of $160 billion for state and local governments, many of which are feeling the pinch from budget shortfalls triggered by the pandemic.
A little over an hour after Mnuchin left the committee, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that they were ready to reenter negotiations with Senate Leader McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The gesture came after private talks broke down Monday. Pelosi and Schumer intimated in a joint statement that the bipartisan $908 billion package was their ground floor.
“While we made a new offer to Leader McConnell and Leader McCarthy on Monday, in the spirit of compromise we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations,” the Democratic lawmakers said. “Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate and we believe that with good-faith negotiations we could come to an agreement. With the imminent availability of the vaccine, it is important for there to be additional funding for distribution to take the vaccine to vaccination. This distribution effort will be led by the states further increasing the need for funding for state and local governments.”
State and local governments get nothing in the proposal from McConnell, a Kentucky Republican.
As the year draws to a close, amid rising rates of coronavirus infection and pervasive joblessness, Republican committee members peppered Mnuchin with questions Wednesday about the appetite in Washington for a deal.
The secretary called out the Democratic leader of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“When we really needed to get this done, it got done with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Mnuchin said of the initial relief package passed by Congress. “When we needed to extend the PPP, people came together in an unprecedented response. Unfortunately, since that period of time, the speaker has said that half a loaf was not good enough and wanted a full loaf. I would encourage Congress: Let’s try to get something done.”
Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, met with Mnuchin on Tuesday. It was their first meeting since October but Mnuchin was mum on details of their conference when appearing before Congress.