House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer rejected the Republicans initial effort to provide coronavirus relief. Responding to reports that Sen. Mitch McConnell and leadership were going to push various elements through as individual appropriations because of an inability to get their own Republicans on board with a larger plan, the Democratic leaders are united in rejecting that approach.
That includes not taking whatever Republicans will offer to avoid the impending cliff of both the rent moratorium and expanded unemployment insurance ending. "This is a package. We cannot piecemeal this," Pelosi said. Schumer added that Democrats would not "take care of one portion of suffering people and leave everyone else hanging." On the floor Thursday morning, Schumer blasted Republicans for being "so divided, so disorganized and so unprepared that they have to struggle to draft even a partisan proposal within their own conference, before they talk to a single Democrat. […] It appears the Republican legislative response to covid is ununified, unserious and unsatisfactory.”
And boy, are Republicans in disarray. “What in the hell are we doing?” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas railed in a luncheon Tuesday with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, during which they attempted to woo the Republican senators. Cruz argued that there shouldn't be more relief funding, that they should be forcing reopening instead despite the fact that his state is among the worst for new infections and deaths. “I just walked out of a meeting that could be sort of a Bernie bros, progressive caucus,” Sen. Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, whined afterwards. “I’m alarmed that we’re talking about spending another trillion dollars we don’t have.” Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, whose state is currently dying of coronavirus, has also said he'd block the aid because "Democrats just want to spend money." And Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin "just [doesn't] see the need for it."
For those keeping count at home, that's four out of the 53 Republicans in the Senate. McConnell needs a minimum of 50 to do anything, absent Democratic votes. Which he's not getting. That's probably one reason he wants to do this piecemeal, figuring he can get bits of things—like the liability protections he's insisting on—done while letting critical financial assistance to actual people slide. But the plan also doesn't include critical aid to states beyond funding to try to force schools to reopen (though it does increase the business meal deduction from 50% to 100%, because that will solve this crisis). That means senators like Susan Collins and Thom Tillis and Cory Gardner and Steve Daines and Joni Ernst who are all running for reelection right now will not be able to tell their constituents they brought money home to save critical services. So there's another handful of votes McConnell needs to worry about.
McConnell has wasted weeks—weeks—of time refusing to act while the crisis got worse and worse. That delay has only resulted in more pain and more death and it's all going to fall on Republicans. “For Americans who rely on federal emergency unemployment relief to feed their families, pay the rent or mortgage and provide a bridge through this crisis, their relief will run out in two days,” Stewart Boss, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said Thursday. “After a two-week recess, Senate Republicans wasted days bickering and then told the White House they would not allow for an extension of the resources that millions of Americans need. Mitch McConnell and Republicans in the Senate are proving once again that they are unwilling to do what is right, even during a public health and economic crisis.”
They're going to pay in November. But in the meantime life is going to be hell for millions of Americans.