Just three days after President Donald Trump tweeted that stimulus negotiations were over, the White House on Friday offered a $ 1.8 trillion counterproposal to Democratic leaders.
That’s more than the $ 1.6 trillion offer the White House gave last week, but still below the $ 2.2 trillion that Democratic leaders want.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin discussed the offer on Friday, but could not reach an agreement. Pelosi’s chief of staff tweeted that the offer lacks “a strategic plan to end the virus,” a key approach that Pelosi highlighted at a press event Thursday.
Yet despite the gap, the two parties are numerically closer than they have been since July, when Democratic leaders were asking for $ 3.4 trillion, while the White House was still under $ 1 trillion. . . But as the White House closes in on Democratic leaders’ request for $ 2.2 trillion, Trump risks alienating Senate Republicans, who are already resisting fiscally. exceed 1.5 trillion dollars. Many Senate Republicans strongly oppose the amount of financial aid Democrats want to send to state and local governments, and Sen. Mitt Romney tweeted Wednesday that it is a “bailout” for the states.
On Friday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters that another stimulus bill is unlikely to pass before the election. That could be bad news for Trump’s election campaign: As of Friday, Democratic candidate Joe Biden has a + 9.7-point lead over President Donald Trump, according to average RealClearPolitics polls.
Yet for months, the federal government has not listened to economists’ calls for more stimulus. The $ 2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March helped ignite the strong economic rebound in late spring and summer, but in recent months that recovery has slowed: U.S. employment increased by 661,000. . . . in September, up from 1.5 million jobs added in August and 1.8 million. added in July
“The risk is that we will go back into the hole if we don’t receive continued additional support from policy makers,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, recently told us.
While the two sides disagree on the dollar size of the next stimulus package, they agree on many areas of spending. Both parties reaffirmed their support this week for another round of stimulus checks of $ 1,200 for adults and $ 500 for dependents. Both sides support more funding for education, coronavirus-related projects, mortgage and rental assistance, food programs, and state and local government funding.
Still, analysts at LPL Financial wrote in a note Wednesday that “despite the president returning to the negotiating table Wednesday morning, prospects for swift passage of a stimulus bill have weakened.
