McConnell sets Friday night deadline for bipartisan deal on stimulus

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is pushing an aggressive schedule, asking Republican and Democratic negotiators who met Friday morning in the Hart Senate Office Building to reach an agreement in principle on a $1 trillion stimulus package by the end of the day.

“I’ve tasked these bipartisan teams to reach an agreement by the end of the day today, midnight,” the GOP leader told reporters after convening the first round of bipartisan talks.

McConnell said he hopes to draft the legislation on Saturday and begin moving immediately to set up the procedure for a Monday vote on the bill, which would then need to go to the House before reaching President Trump’s desk.

“We’ll need Saturday to be drafting what we can agree to, and because of the procedural hurdles you have to jump through in the Senate, tomorrow I’ll need to file cloture on the motion to proceed to a shell,” McConnell told reporters.

It’s an ambitious timeline, as Democrats have already panned the Senate GOP plan released Thursday as too focused on business and not doing enough to help workers. It does not include the massive expansion of unemployment benefits that Democrats have called for.

“We are beginning to review Sen. McConnell’s proposal and on first reading, it is not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a joint statement issued Thursday evening.

White House Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland emphasized the pressure on bipartisan negotiators to reach a deal quickly.

“We’re going to spend the next several hours working to drive a bipartisan agreement,” he told reporters outside the meeting room. “The need for urgency has been pressed repeatedly by the president and [Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin] and we’re going to work very hard to be incredibly nimble, quite quick — again so that we’re in a position for results and relief to be delivered to the American people as fast as possible.”

Ueland said the White House is “very supportive” of the Senate GOP package but added the administration wants “clarification” and “refinement” on several points in the plan.

The Republican and Democratic negotiators broke into four groups to work on the major components of the GOP stimulus plan: rebates and tax breaks to help the broader economy, a rescue package for small businesses, health care issues and targeted relief for the industries hardest hit by the crisis. 

The GOP negotiators are Senate Health Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Banking Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (Idaho), Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (Miss.), Small Business Committee Chairman Marco Rubio (Fla.), Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) and Sen. Pat Toomey (Pa.).

The Democratic negotiators are Sens. Jack Reed (R.I.), the ranking member on the Armed Services Committee; Ron Wyden (Ore.), the ranking member on the Finance Committee; Maria Cantwell (Wash.), the ranking member on the Commerce Committee; Bob Menendez (N.J.), the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee; Ben Cardin (Md.), the ranking member on the Small Business Committee, Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) and Schumer.