U.S. Senate leaders and the Trump administration clinched a bipartisan deal early Wednesday morning on a nearly $2 trillion emergency relief package in response to the coronavirus pandemic, a move intended to assist businesses and millions of Americans amid an unprecedented halt in the U.S. economy.
The announcement, which came around 1 a.m. local time, capped five days of tense, marathon talks between senators and the White House. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell vowed that the Senate will pass the bill later Wednesday, while House leaders are eyeing an expedited process to get the massive emergency package to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature before the end of the week.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led the negotiations for the White House, were under intense pressure to reach an agreement before the financial markets opened back up on Wednesday morning, facing a dire economic outlook and a growing number of Americans losing their livelihoods amid the global crisis.
In a show of unity, McConnell and Schumer announced the deal in a joint set of speeches from the Senate floor. But lawmakers and aides were still finalizing the text of the legislation, which is expected to be released later Wednesday morning, according to Eric Ueland, the White House legislative affairs chief.
“In effect, this is a wartime level of investment into our nation,” McConnell said on the Senate floor just after 1:30 a.m. as he announced the deal. “The men and women of the greatest country on earth are going to defeat this coronavirus and reclaim our future.”
The Senate’s lead negotiators — Mnuchin, Schumer, McConnell and Ueland — spent most of Tuesday huddling behind closed doors and shuttling between offices as they finalized policy details and legislative text. Rep. Mark Meadows, who was recently tapped as Trump’s next chief of staff, and a half-dozen GOP senators who were heavily involved in crafting the rescue package were also part of the in-person discussions.
“After sleep-deprived nights and marathon negotiating sessions, we have a bipartisan agreement on the largest rescue package in American history,” Schumer said. “This bill is far from perfect, but we believe the language has been improved significantly to warrant its quick passage.”
As the negotiations dragged late into Tuesday evening, some Republican senators began to grow impatient and called on the president to step back from the negotiating table — a sign of the tension that has bubbled up in the Senate in recent days as they struggled to break the impasse, and as one of their own, Republican Senator Rand Paul, tested positive for the coronavirus.
“Pass the damn bill. Enough already!” tweeted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s top allies.
After Schumer insisted that negotiators were “on the 2-yard line” Tuesday afternoon, he and his counterparts spent several hours finalizing the language and hammering out the remaining sticking points, which included everything from the structure of loans to the airline industry to details about an enhanced fund for state and local governments.
Senate Democrats had been pushing for strict oversight of a $500 billion fund designed to lend money to corporations that have been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. Democrats had criticized the initial proposal as a “slush fund” that provided no mechanisms for accountability and allowed the Trump administration to withhold details about which companies received such loans.
One of the concessions Democrats said they won in the negotiations was an agreement that the pot of money will be overseen by an inspector general and a congressional panel. They also secured $150 billion for a state and local fund, $130 billion for hospitals, and beefed up unemployment insurance that will give Americans four months-worth of their income if they are furloughed or lose their job due to the coronavirus crisis, according to Schumer.
The version of the massive rescue package that was initially unveiled by the GOP provides direct payments to qualified individuals and families with checks of up to $1,200 and $2,400, based on income, and allocates $367 billion in federally guaranteed loans for small businesses.
The final product, according to McConnell, “will help secure our economic foundations and stabilize key national industries to prevent as many layoffs as possible.”
On the other side of the Capitol, Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who is working from Washington while the vast majority of House members remain in their districts for recess — said she hopes to pass the Senate bill via unanimous consent of the chamber. Such an agreement would not only allow swift passage, but would also keep worried lawmakers away from the Capitol, where the virus has started spreading.
But Democratic and Republican leaders in the House don’t yet know whether it would be possible to muscle through a sweeping $2 trillion bill without a single objection from any of the chamber’s 435 lawmakers. In fact, the House GOP’s whip team held a conference call Tuesday evening where they acknowledged that there’s a strong possibility that a member will object to a unanimous consent agreement, according to a whip team source. But passing the rescue package by voice vote is another viable option and being discussed with the GOP conference, the source added.
Privately, many lawmakers say they don’t want to return to the House, which would risk further spreading the virus either while traveling to Washington or within the Capitol itself. Three members of Congress, including two House lawmakers, have tested positive for the coronavirus, as well as several staffers.
It would be nearly unprecedented, however, for the House to unanimously approve a package that large, with massive implications for nearly every sector of the economy. Several lawmakers, including freshman firebrand Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have telegraphed at least some concerns with the latest version of the Senate talks.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told Democrats on a conference call Tuesday afternoon that he would prefer to vote by unanimous consent, but still doesn’t have timing on when a vote would be, according to people familiar with the discussions on the call.
Hoyer also said Congress would take up at least one more economic package to respond to the crisis, possibly appeasing some in the caucus who are pushing for still more in the current bill.
The sudden burst of productivity between Senate negotiators — with both sides declaring they have moved beyond partisan politics — was a welcome shift from Monday, when a breakdown in talks and two failed procedural votes led to raucous exchanges and bitter sniping on the Senate floor.
Stocks soared as trading closed Tuesday afternoon, with the Dow Jones Industrial average surging more than 2,000 points, as investors eyed an imminent deal.
One of the biggest question marks — like in all must-pass bills that require buy-in from both parties — was Trump.
The president has sent mixed signals over whether he would support the deal, taking to Twitter on Monday night to harangue Democrats over their demands, but pushing for an immediate vote by Tuesday morning. “Congress must approve the deal, without all of the nonsense, today. The longer it takes, the harder it will be to start up our economy. Our workers will be hurt!” Trump tweeted.
Mnuchin, who had been running point on the negotiations with Schumer, said he was actively keeping the president in the loop. At one point Tuesday morning, Mnuchin said he had spoken with Trump twice already.
If the House tries to pass the rescue package unanimously, leadership could encounter roadblocks in either party: Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar, members of the so-called progressive squad, have already raised concerns with the emerging deal.
“The developments of this Senate relief bill are concerning,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “It seems to give a *HALF TRILLION DOLLARS* away to big corporations, w/ few worker protections.”
And in the GOP, some members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus have been notorious for grinding fast-moving spending bills to a halt; Republican Senator Louie Gohmert threatened to hold up a package of corrections to another coronavirus relief bill just last week, though he eventually backed off.
During the House GOP’s whip team conference call, Minority Whip Steve Scalise emphasized to his colleagues that their best bet is to accept the Senate bill, given the progressive wish-list included in Pelosi’s stimulus bill.
Heather Caygle and Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.