GOP senator: Pelosi victory on coronavirus relief bill 'death knell' for Republicans
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A coronavirus relief package doesn't sound like it's any closer to receiving a stamp of approval from Congress after both Democrats and Republicans criticized — for different reasons — the latest $1.8 trillion proposal from the White House.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration's offer, which comes just a few days after President Trump briefly called for a halt to negotiations, "amounted to one step forward and two steps back." The speaker, whose latest public offer was about $2.2 trillion, explained that the major divides between Democrats and the White House were over an apparent lack of national coronavirus containment strategy and inadequate funding for child care and supplemental insurance benefits.
Republicans, meanwhile, told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Trump's bill was too big during a Saturday conference call. Per Politico, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said "there's no appetite to spend" what either the White House or Pelosi have put on the table, while some of his colleagues including Sen. John Borrasso (R-Wyo.) and fellow Tennessean Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) suggested passing legislation that costly would lead to an unhappy outcome for the GOP at the ballot box this November. Read more at Politico.
Multiple R senators criticized the proposal from multiple angles per person briefed.
Meadows told them: “You all will have to come to my funeral” bc he has to carry the message back to the president.
Blackburn said the bill would be the "death knell" for their majority
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) October 10, 2020
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