Pelosi Rejects McConnell Offer on Covid Relief

By Yuval Rosenberg

Dems Reject McConnell Offer on Covid Relief

Lawmakers introduced a
stopgap funding bill Tuesday that would fund the
government until December 18, giving them another week to hash out
a full-year bill as well as a relief package to boost the
pandemic-ravaged economy. The House is expected to vote on the bill
Wednesday, followed by the Senate.

Negotiations over the relief bill are still hung up on some
basic issues, however.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday
proposed to drop the two main stumbling blocks — liability
protections for businesses, which Republicans want, and aid for
state and local governments, which Democrats want.

“What’s the way forward? We know the new administration is going
to be asking for another package. What I recommend is we set aside
liability and set aside state and local and pass those things that
we agree, on knowing full well we'll be back at this after the
first of the year," McConnell said, referring to expectations that
Congress would negotiate a new Covid-relief package once
President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.

McConnell’s proposal was quickly rejected by Senate Minority
Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who charged that it would lead to job
losses for essential workers like firefighters and police officers.
“Leader McConnell has refused to be part of the bipartisan
negotiations,” Schumer said. “And now he’s sabotaging good faith,
bipartisan negotiations because his partisan ideological effort is
not getting a good reception.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was also sharply critical of
McConnell’s offer. “Leader McConnell's efforts to undermine
good-faith, bipartisan negotiations are appalling,” Pelosi said in
a statement.
“What does Leader McConnell have against our heroes? Our health
care workers, our first responders and other frontline workers have
risked their lives to save lives. Now, Leader McConnell wants them
to lose their jobs and our constituents to lose the essential
services they provide. With vaccine distribution being administered
by the states, state and local funding is central to our efforts to
crush the virus.”

Among those working directly on the relief package, Sen. Mitt
Romney (R-UT) has proposed a short-term liability shield, but his
plan has not been embraced so far. Lawmakers including Sens. John
Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Richard Durbin (D-IL) and
Angus King (I-ME) are reportedly continuing to work on a compromise
on the question of liability.

A push for more checks: The $908 billion proposal from a
bipartisan group of centrists that is serving as a general
framework for the negotiations does not include direct payments for
individuals, but White House officials on Tuesday pushed for the
inclusion of $600 checks for most Americans — half the level
provided by the Cares Act last spring.

President Trump has privately expressed support for providing as
much as $2,000 per person,
according to The Washington Post, which noted that
the first round of payments included Trump’s name printed on the
checks.

Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have
also called for another round of direct payments, saying they would
oppose the relief bill if it fails to include them.

Congress Barrels Toward Veto Showdown With Trump

His time in office may be nearly over, but President Trump is
headed for what may be a first: an attempt by Congress to override
his veto.

Lawmakers are moving ahead with the $741 billion National
Defense Authorization Act this week, despite Trump’s threat to veto
the bill over its failure to remove legal protections for tech
companies.

The House is expected to vote Tuesday on the annual defense
policy bill, with the Senate following soon thereafter. On Tuesday
morning, Trump reiterated a threat he has made several times
before, referring to a specific provision of the Communications
Decency Act that provides broad immunity to content posted on sites
run by the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

“I hope House Republicans will vote against the very weak
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which I will VETO,”
Trump
tweeted. “Must include a termination of Section 230 (for
National Security purposes) ...”

The president also referred to issues involving national
monuments, troop levels overseas and 5G technologies, though it’s
not clear if he was issuing a new set of demands for lawmakers to
consider.

Veto by the numbers: Both the House and Senate passed
earlier versions of the bill with veto-proof two-thirds majorities,
but it’s not clear that Congress could provide the same margins
this time around. The House Freedom Caucus said Tuesday that it
supported the president’s veto threat, and the group’s roughly
three dozen members could tilt the House vote in favor of a
successful veto.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) signaled that he
would not support an effort to override a veto. “I don’t believe
Republicans, in our work with the president, always, that you vote
to override a veto,” McCarthy told reporters Tuesday.

Other Republicans called for lawmakers to support the bill. “The
stronger the vote, the less chance of having to deal with a veto
later,” Rep. Mac Thornberry (TX), the top Republican on the House
Armed Services Committee,
told reporters Monday. “If somebody is going to
vote no on a bill because of what’s not in it, that has nothing to
do with it … that can’t be the standard,” Thornberry added.

Another veto option: Even if Congress
is able to provide veto-proof majorities, Trump has another option
for gumming up the works: the pocket veto. A president can simply
refuse to sign a bill that lands on his desk, allowing the
legislation to expire after 10 days (not including Sundays). Trump
could take the route, forcing Congress to return to town after
Christmas for another vote – a particularly challenging course
during a pandemic.

Biden Outlines 3 Goals for Fighting Covid in First 100
Days

As the United States surpassed 15 million confirmed Covid-19
infections on Tuesday, President-elect Joe Biden formally
introduced key members of his health team and laid out three goals
for combatting the pandemic during his first 100 days in office:
“Masking. Vaccinations. Opening schools.”

Biden said that he the pandemic won’t end in his first 100 days,
and he warned that “things may well get worse before they get
better.” But he said he was confident that over his first 100 days,
“we can change the course of the disease and change life in America
for the better.”

To do that, he said, he would sign an executive order on his
first day as president requiring masks in places where he can do
so, including in federal buildings and during interstate travel on
planes, trains and buses. And he reiterated that he would ask
governors and mayors to require masks and ask the American public
to wear masks for 100 days to help reduce the spread of the virus.
“It’s not a political statement — it's a patriotic act,” he
said.

Biden also said he and his team would get Americans at least 100
million Covid-19 vaccine shots in his first 100 days, calling on
Congress to pass a $900 billion bipartisan Covid-relief package and
provide the needed funding, warning that millions of Americans may
otherwise have to wait months longer to get vaccinated.

“This will be one of the hardest and most costly operational
challenges in our nation’s history,” he said. “Without urgent
action by this Congress this month to put sufficient resources into
vaccine distribution and manufacturing — which the bipartisan group
is working on — there is a real chance that, after an early round
of vaccinations, the effort will slow and stall.”

Biden added that getting students back in classrooms
should be a national priority, again urging Congress to provide
money toward the goal. “If Congress provides the funding we need to
protect students, educators, and staff, and if states and cities
put strong public health measures in place that we all follow, then
my team will work to see that the majority of our schools can be
open by the end of my first 100 days,” he said.

Becerra Faces Senate Fight

Biden’s pick for Health and Human Services secretary,
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, may be headed for a
confirmation fight in the Republican-controlled Senate, as a number
of GOP senators have already raised questions about his
qualifications.

  • ”I’m not sure what his Health and Human Services
    credentials are,” said Senator John Cornyn of Texas, according to

    Bloomberg News    . “It’s not like Alex Azar who used
    to work for pharma and have a health-care background,” he said
    referring to the current HHS secretary.
  • Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas called Becerra a
    “disaster” who is “unqualified” to lead the department. “I’ll be
    voting no, and Becerra should be rejected by the Senate,” he wrote
    on Twitter.

Republicans have signaled that they
will delay hearings on Becerra’s
nomination.

Biden on Tuesday praised Becerra’s track record. “Xavier
spent his career fighting to expand access to health care, reduce
racial health disparities, protect the Affordable Care Act, and
take on powerful special interests who prey on and profit off
people’s health — from opioid manufacturers to Big Tobacco,” he
said.

Column of the Day: A Revolution in Thinking on Public Debt

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane writes that shifting
economic thinking on public debt “borders on intellectual
revolution.”

He explains:

“Government debt accumulation was once considered inherently
risky: By competing with private investors for investible funds, it
would trigger ruinous interest-rate spikes. The new consensus is
that debt is, if not quite the proverbial free lunch, then such a
good deal that the United States and its fellow industrialized
democracies can’t afford not to borrow. And this applies not only
to the covid-related crisis but also to the more normal times
ahead. …
“Persuasive as it is, this rosy scenario would be even more
convincing if economists could say exactly why interest
rates are behaving as they are.
“For now, the prime suspect is a mismatch between abundant
private savings around the world and scarce profitable
opportunities for private investment — the latter of which, in
turn,
partly reflects slow labor supply growth in
industrialized countries.
“Under such circumstances, holders of wealth see no
alternative to parking their money with governments. There’s no
private investment to ‘crowd out’; to the contrary, financial
markets are actually signaling that the highest and best use of the
funds may be a public one.”

Read the full column, including some implications for
Social Security and Medicare, at
The Washington Post.

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