Members of Congress from both houses and both parties on Tuesday proposed a $908 billion coronavirus stimulus bill that included enhanced unemployment benefits, help for small businesses, and aid for state and local governments.
But it does not include a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks.
The framework still has to be written into legislation, pass both houses and be signed by the president.
It includes $228 billion in new forgivable loans for small businesses and clarified that the aid was not taxable, $120 billion for state and local governments, $180 billion in enhanced unemployment insurance benefits of $300 a week for 18 weeks, $92 billion for education and child care, and $45 billion for airlines, buses, Amtrak, and public transportation systems such as NJ Transit.
“We simply can’t leave town and leave anyone in the cold,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-5th Dist., said at the Capitol Hill press conference joined by 13 other lawmakers. “It is an essential downpayment on what our families, small businesses and local communities need.”
There also was funding for nutrition programs, rental assistance, student loans, U.S. Postal Service operations, health care providers and vaccine research, development and distribution. Those were deemed higher priorities than another round of stimulus checks.
The measure is half the size of the $1.8 trillion in stimulus spending that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were discussing before the election.
Lawmakers who announced this latest effort to find a compromise described their bill as a four-month emergency relief package for Americans struggling to get through the coronavirus pandemic.
“Maybe the only time to borrow money is when theres a crisis and this is a crisis,” said U.S. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. “This is not a $1.8 trillion stimulus bill, this is a relief bill of half that amount.”
Still to be worked out is how to protect businesses, schools, and other institutions from lawsuits by customers or employees infected by the coronavirus, a key demand of Republicans, while also including safety protections.
Proponents said Congress next year could write another spending bill after Joe Biden becomes president, but didn’t want to go home for the holidays without passing some legislation.
“It would be stupidity on steroids if Congress left for Christmas without doing an interim package,” said U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.
Indeed, Biden, in a speech on Tuesday to announce his economic advisers, called on Congress to “come together and pass a robust package of relief” while saying that his transition team already was working on a new package of aid to deal with the pandemic.
“Any package passed in the lame duck session is likely to be — at best — just the start,” he said.
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It remains to be seen whether either Pelosi or Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., allows the compromise bill to come up for a vote.
Lawmakers said they had apprised both leaders of their negotiations, which took place over the last month as Congress failed to pass a new stimulus bill. Neither leader supported the last bipartisan attempt at a compromise, offered in September by the Problem Solvers Caucus.
“I’ve always encouraged our Democratic senators to sit down with Republicans and negotiate,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said during a separate press conference on Tuesday. “This is a very good effort.”
Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday that Democratic leaders had made a new proposal to McConnell and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, and said Mnuchin told her he was reviewing both their ideas and the latest bipartisan suggestions.
“Additional COVID relief is long overdue and must be passed in this lame duck session,” Pelosi said.
House Democrats twice have approved stimulus legislation of more than $2 trillion. Senate Republicans objected to spending anywhere that much on a stimulus bill.
While Senate Republicans failed to pass a smaller bill, they blamed Democrats for the stalemate, citing such House provisions as temporarily suspending the $10,000 cap on deducting state and local taxes and allowing banks to offer financial services to legal marijuana businesses.
“The additional relief that would help families, workers, schools and small businesses cross the finish line has been held up for months while Democratic leaders pursued an all-or-nothing approach,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
But as the price for passing any bill, McConnell demanded additional taxpayer subsidies for religious and other private schools as well as the lawsuit protections for businesses.
And the GOP has refused to agree to the Democrats’ major demand for aid for cash-strapped state and local governments to help pay the salaries of first responders, teachers and other public employees.
“The leader’s view seems to be that the only things that should be considered in the next COVID relief bill are items that Republicans approve of, even if the needs of the country go way beyond what’s on their narrow list,” Schumer said on the Senate floor.
U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., said at a meeting of the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday that 1.1 million state and local government employees already have lost their jobs, citing statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
When Biden was vice president, federal aid to state governments comprised a key component of the $787 billion stimulus law enacted in 2009 in response to the Great Recession. It accounted for 42% of the package, or $330 billion, according to the California State Legislature’s fiscal and policy analysis office.
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Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.
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Second stimulus check update: There’s no $1,200 payment in this new bipartisan bill. Here’s the latest. - NJ.com
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