Senate Republicans preparing $500B virus relief proposal
WASHINGTON
(AP) — Senate Republican leaders are preparing a slimmed-down
coronavirus relief package of roughly $500 billion that will include
extended payments for unemployed people and smaller businesses, a GOP
senator said Tuesday.
The measure will also include $10 billion for the embattled Postal Service,
said one top GOP aide. The agency has become the focus of a
campaign-season battle over whether it will have enough resources to
handle an expected flood of mail-in ballots for this November’s
presidential and congressional elections.
The fight between
President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats over weathering the
pandemic has become a critical battle that’s highlighted Trump’s
troubled handling of an outbreak that has killed over 170,000 Americans,
cost tens of millions of jobs and shuttered businesses in virtually
every community.
It’s also focused recently on newly imposed cuts
in Postal Service operations that critics say are aimed at curtailing
the agency’s ability to deliver mail-in votes in time for them to be
counted this November. That has coincided with Trump’s repeated
insistence, without foundation, that expected record levels of mail-in
votes by people eager to avoid polling places will lead to widespread
fraud in the elections.
Under intense public and political
pressure, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said Tuesday that he would
withhold some of the operational changes he has begun to impose, like
the removal of mailboxes, until after the elections.
Negotiations
over a far larger coronavirus relief bill are expected to resume after
Labor Day between the White House and top congressional Democrats.
“I’m
hoping that we actually can get back together, and in spite of the
proximity to the election, put it aside and reach an agreement sometime
soon,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday in
Manchester, Kentucky.
With Democrats demanding that bargainers
piece together a wide-ranging measure, the trimmer package emerging from
McConnell and other top Republicans seems to be an effort to show
voters what the GOP would favor enacting quickly. With the party’s
presidential convention next week, the measure could give Republican
senators facing difficult reelection races this fall an opportunity to
vote for a relief measure with popular provisions, even though it would
probably be blocked by Democrats demanding a more generous bill.
The
GOP package was also taking shape as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., has summoned the House to return to Washington for an unusual
Saturday vote to provide $25 billion for the Postal Service and to block
changes in the way it operates. In a letter to fellow Democrats, she
said she’d continue seeking a broader economic relief bill “as the
coronavirus crisis continues to spiral further out of control.”
Sen.
Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Republican leadership, said
the emerging legislation will provide $300 weekly in extra federal
payments for unemployed people above the state payments that
beneficiaries receive. He said he believes the extra payments would run
through 2020.
A massive relief bill approved earlier this year
provided $600 extra per week, but those payments expired at the end of
July. Democrats want to continue the added $600 in payments, but Trump
and congressional Republicans have pushed for less.
Blunt said the
trimmed-down measure would also have money for schools to cope with the
coronavirus pandemic and for businesses struggling to stay open and
retain employees during the staggering recession.
A second GOP Senate aide said the new proposal includes $105 billion for education.
That
aide said the plan also has $16 billion for virus testing and $29
billion for developing vaccines, manufacturing treatment and other
initiatives aimed at conquering a virus that has killed more than
170,000 Americans and infected more than 5 million this year.
The
bill does not include a renewal of the one-time direct payments of up to
$1,200 for taxpayers and dependents that were part of early legislation
aimed at providing relief to people as the economy slowed to a near
halt. In Kentucky, McConnell said he’d favor continuing the aid to
lower-income people “who have been hit the hardest by the pandemic.”
The
Democratic-led House approved a $3 trillion relief plan in May, while
Senate Republicans offered a $1 trillion package. In negotiations
between Democrats and the White House that dissolved in bitterness
earlier this month, Democrats dropped their proposal to $2 trillion and
asked Republicans to meet them at that halfway point, but that has not
happened.
The two GOP aides spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the legislation publicly.
AP reporter Bruce Schreiner in Frankfort, Kentucky, contributed to this report.