For weeks and weeks the stimulus negotiations centered around talks between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
At first, there didn’t seem to be much progress being made but after a lot of back-and-forth it looked like the two were starting to see eye to eye.
The proposal that the White House was working on with Pelosi was steadily climbing up in value from around $1.5 trillion to near $2 trillion.
More and more compromises were being made and more components were being added to the stimulus package.
The two were constantly making positive statements publicly about how great things were going and Pelosi even claimed she was “happy” about the negotiations.
It seemed like they were on the brink of coming to an agreement and then Pelosi said she would be awaiting a response from the White House to a few crucial items.
Presumably, this response would help to finalize the agreement by providing her with some details regarding specific issues.
Pelosi did not get the response she was hoping for and in a letter to Mnuchin she said she is “still awaiting” replies from the White House “on multiple items of critical importance.”
Apparently, these differences included the following items:
- a national testing strategy
- state and local government relief
- enhanced unemployment insurance
- child care
- tax credits
- liability protections for businesses
- workplace safety standards.
“Your responses are critical for our negotiations to continue,” Pelosi wrote.
“The President’s words that ‘after the election, we will get the best stimulus package you have ever seen’ only have meaning if he can get Mitch McConnell to take his hand off the pause button and get Senate Republican Chairmen moving toward agreement with their House counterparts.”
Unfortunately, this letter to Mnuchin looks like it probably just set negotiations back.
Mnuchin responded to Pelosi, stating that she “sent [the letter] to my office at midnight and simultaneously released it to the press, I can unfortunately only conclude that it was a political stunt.”
He reiterated that he has “dedicated endless hour to trying to reach a compromise” but that Democrats have not done the same.
He also stated that contrary to Pelosi’s assertions, the White House did accept the proposal for coronavirus testing and offered “reasonable compromise positions.”
He then hammered home his opposition to the all or nothing approach that Pelosi has taken to stimulus relief.
“Your ALL OR NONE approach is hurting hard-working Americans who need help NOW,” he concluded.
Pelosi did respond via her spokesperson Drew Hammill who stated that the White House “has not lived up to Secretary Mnuchin’s promise to accept Democrats’ language to crush the virus.”
He also said that the Democrats were still waiting for meaningful responses on the topics that issue.
“These responses are needed so that talks can advance to deliver coronavirus relief as soon as possible. It is disappointing that the White House wasted time on this letter instead of meaningful responses to meet the needs of the American people,” Hammill said.
This back-and-forth drama is pretty much everything you need to know about where things currently stand.
It seems like negotiations truly fell apart in the last couple of weeks and that some progress may have even been reversed as the relationship between Mnuchin and Pelosi seems to have deteriorated to degree.
Despite recent comments from Pelosi that she wants a stimulus package to pass before the next inauguration, there is little evidence to suggest that is going to happen.
Related
Biden’s plan for stimulus relief
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Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
