Mitch McConnell announces plan to vote on slimmed-down coronavirus relief bill in Senate

WASHINGTON — Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced plans Tuesday to vote on a slimmed-down coronavirus relief bill later this week in the Senate, an effort to put Democrats on the defensive after weeks of stalled talks.

The legislation is not expected to advance, since that would require support from Democrats, who've held out for a larger package. McConnell has struggled even to unite Republicans behind the bill, and is likely to suffer some GOP defections.

But a month after bipartisan talks collapsed on Capitol Hill, McConnell is aiming to pressure House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., by unveiling legislation that funds some key priorities including small businesses, enhanced unemployment insurance, child care, the post office, and schools.

In a statement Tuesday, McConnell alleged that Pelosi had refused to negotiate on a targeted relief bill despite bringing the House back into session last month to pass a bill that would provide $25 billion for the U.S. Postal Service.

"Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer said a targeted deal on jobless benefits and the Paycheck Protection Program would be 'piecemeal,' but then Speaker Pelosi came rushing back to pass the most piecemeal bill imaginable: Postal Service legislation that completely ignored the health, economic, and education crises facing families," McConnell said.

"Everything Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer have done suggests one simple motivation: They do not want American families to see any more bipartisan aid before the polls close on President (Donald) Trump's reelection. They have taken Americans' health, jobs, and schools hostage for perceived partisan gain."

In a joint statement, Pelosi and Schumer dismissed McConnell's bill, saying it "doesn't come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere."

"This emaciated bill is only intended to help vulnerable Republican Senators by giving them a 'check-the-box' vote to maintain the appearance that they're not held hostage by their extreme right-wing that doesn't want to spend a nickel to help people," Pelosi and Schumer said. "Democrats want to work on bipartisan legislation that will meet the urgent needs of the American people but Republicans continue to move in the wrong direction."

Pelosi and House Democrats passed a $3 trillion measure in May that would have funded another round of stimulus checks, unemployment benefits, hospitals, coronavirus testing, and provided money to states and cities, among other things. The White House and Senate Republicans dismissed the bill and said they would not consider it.

In late July and early August, Pelosi and Schumer met multiple times with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in an effort to come up with a compromise. But they failed, with Democrats refusing to consider a bill costing less than $2 trillion, and Republicans and administration officials dismissing that figure as too high.

The House and Senate adjourned last month with no agreement. But the Senate is coming back into session Tuesday afternoon and the House returns next week, giving lawmakers one last chance to make a deal before adjourning through the election.

Senate Republicans and administration officials believe Pelosi will come under growing pressure from moderate members of her own caucus who face tough reelections and have been uneasy about the failure to act on additional economic stimulus. McConnell's new legislation is partly an attempt to attract the attention of such lawmakers.

"I'm optimistic in the next two weeks that the pressure and the voice of the American people will start to have an impact on members of Congress," Meadows said Tuesday on Fox Business Network.

McConnell has been working with administration officials for weeks to try to finalize the new Senate GOP bill, which he is calling a "targeted" coronavirus relief bill, but he's faced competing pressures from Senate Republicans. Some conservatives didn't want to spend any more money at all after Congress dedicated around $3 trillion to pandemic relief in the spring, while a handful of vulnerable incumbents who are up for reelection in November have been eager to vote on generous new aid for their constituents.

A $1 trillion bill McConnell released in July was quickly rejected by many Senate Republicans, leaving the GOP without a unified position in the last round of negotiations. The new legislation, which McConnell planned to unveil later Tuesday, costs about half that much. It also repurposes unspent funds from the small business Paycheck Protection Program and other areas to keep the cost even lower and assuage conservative concerns.

The legislation includes $300 weekly enhanced unemployment benefits through the end of the year, to replace a $600 weekly benefit that expired for some 30 million unemployed workers on July 31. It does not include new benefit checks to individual Americans, but it does include a new round of small business funding, $10 billion for child care and $10 billion for the U.S. Postal Service, among other provisions.

The legislation includes a compromise aimed at resolving a dispute over a push by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to include a tax credit to reimburse donations to state-level scholarship funds, which help families pay for private school tuition and other educational expenses. Some fellow Republicans opposed this idea, and McConnell's legislation attempts to resolve it by including tax credits for just two years — instead of a permanent tax credit as Cruz had sought.

The bill could serve as a new starting point for talks with Democrats, although a better-than-expected August jobs report may have reduced the urgency for action. President Trump and members of his administration have been speaking bullishly about the economic recovery they say is underway, even as millions remain unemployed.

"We can live with it — we can absolutely live with it," White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Bloomberg last week when asked if the administration would be willing to not reach a deal with Congress.

At the same time, Congress is facing a Sept. 30 deadline when agency-wide funding will expire and the government will begin to shut down without action. Pelosi and Mnuchin have already begun work on a so-called "continuing resolution" that would extend government funding at existing levels through the election, in order to avert a shutdown.

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The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein contributed to this report.