In op-ed pieces published by The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times on Thursday, the papers’ editorial boards criticized the Senate GOP’s lack of timeliness in reaching agreement on economic relief. McConnell shared some details about the Republican proposal on Tuesday, saying it would include another wave of direct payments and financing for developing a coronavirus vaccine. But congressional Democrats and Republicans need to reach a consensus before the legislation is passed.
“Congress needs an agreement, now,” the Post editorial board wrote on Thursday. “House Democrats passed a comprehensive coronavirus relief bill in May. Republicans waited. Now, with federal economic aid expiring at month’s end, they cannot agree among themselves on a plan, let alone forge a compromise with Democrats.”
The upcoming relief legislation will follow other bills passed earlier to offset the economic consequences of the pandemic. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a bipartisan bill signed into law by President Donald Trump at the end of March, provided direct payments to Americans within certain income brackets and expanded unemployment benefits as jobless claims began to surge.
Those expanded benefits are due to expire at the end of July, even though U.S. unemployment is higher now than at any point during the two-year Great Recession. A subsequent piece of relief legislation that House Democrats passed in May, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, allocated federal funding to continue the expanded unemployment benefits for those out of work.
But Republican lawmakers have pushed back against the proposed funding ahead of a formal Senate vote, arguing that the benefits, when combined with state unemployment payments, sometimes surpassed a worker’s normal salary and discouraged job seeking.
“That concern might make sense on the surface, but it ignores reality. For starters, states typically bar people from collecting unemployment when they have a viable job offer,” the Los Angeles Times editorial board wrote on Thursday. “But as a number of states have acknowledged, returning to a job that increases the risk of contracting COVID-19 isn’t a viable option for many Americans.”
Senate Republicans reached agreements with the White House on some elements of the relief legislation in Thursday negotiations, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told CNBC’s Squawk Box. Mnuchin said the proposals aimed to support education and jobs, two of Trump’s priorities for the relief package. But they did not finalize a GOP proposal on unemployment benefits, although Mnuchin reiterated, “We’re not going to pay people more money to stay at home than work.”
Newsweek reached out to McConnell’s office for comment but did not receive a reply in time for publication. The White House had no comment.
