Happy Tuesday and welcome back to On The Money. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.
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THE BIG DEAL—McConnell says he would give Trump-backed coronavirus deal a vote in Senate: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on Tuesday that if the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reach a deal on coronavirus relief he would bring the agreement up for a vote on the Senate floor.
“If a presidentially supported bill clears the House at some point we’ll bring it to the floor,” McConnell told reporters during a weekly press conference.
The significance: McConnell had previously stopped short of explicitly saying an agreement would get a vote amid widespread opposition from Senate Republicans to a package with a large price tag. However, McConnell did not commit to a vote before the Nov. 3 election, which is roughly two weeks away.
The state of play: Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are currently negotiating a coronavirus package between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion, though Trump has signaled he was willing to go higher.
“It’s very simple. I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday, though Democrats passed a much larger bill earlier this year.
But it is unclear if Senate Republicans would support a bill that size.
- Asked if his members would support it, McConnell said: “We’d have to see what it was first.”
- Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican, told reporters on Monday evening that it would be “hard” to get 13 Republicans to support a $1.8 trillion coronavirus deal.
- If every Democrat voted for a bipartisan deal, 13 GOP senators would be needed to help get it over procedural hurdles.
The Hill’s Jordain Carney has more here.
Mnuchin, Pelosi see progress, but no breakthrough: On the other side of the Capitol, Pelosi’s office signaled that while she and Mnuchin are “closer to an agreement,” there remain key differences requiring another transfer of proposals — and more time consumed as Nov. 3 quickly approaches.
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“Today’s deadline enabled the Speaker and Secretary to see that decisions could be reached and language could be exchanged, demonstrating that both sides are serious about finding a compromise,” Drew Hammill, Pelosi’s spokesman, tweeted.
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Yet the Speaker said that to pass the measure before Election Day, the House would have to draft the legislation by the end of the week — a heavy lift considering that she and Mnuchin have yet to agree on the contours of the package.
Still, Pelosi said she’s “optimistic” about the chances. The Hill’s Mike Lillis and Scott Wong explain why.
Read more: Nearly three-fourths of Americans support $2T coronavirus relief bill: poll
LEADING THE DAY
Trump, House lawyers return to court in fight over subpoena for financial records: Attorneys for President Trump and House Democrats grappled in court again on Tuesday over an investigative subpoena for the president’s financial records following a Supreme Court ruling this summer that put the legislative investigation on hold.
The case is now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where a three-judge panel is weighing how to proceed with the subpoena from the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
- Cameron Norris, representing Trump, told the court Tuesday that the judges should scrutinize the committee’s rationale for the subpoena, which encompasses eight years of financial records from the president’s accounting firm Mazars.
- Douglas Letter, the House’s general counsel, argued Tuesday that the committee deserves to know whether Trump is compromised by financial entanglements with foreign entities.
The D.C. Circuit sided with the House last year, ordering Mazars to comply with the subpoena. But the Supreme Court overturned the decision, saying that the lower courts need to better balance the interests of both the legislative and executive branches when deciding a dispute over access to the president’s records. The Hill’s Harper Neidig tells us where things stand now.
Most voters think Trump should be paying more in taxes: poll: A large majority of people think that President Trump should be paying more in taxes, according to a survey from the Financial Times and the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
- Seventy-two percent of likely voters nationwide said that they think Trump should be paying more, while 26 percent said he’s paying the right amount and 2 percent said he should be paying less.
- More than 90 percent of Democrats said they think Trump should be paying more, while 77 percent of independents and 47 percent of Republicans said the same.
- Sixty-one percent of voters said they think Trump is unfairly taking advantage of the U.S. tax system, while 39 percent said they think he is fairly following the rules of the tax system.
The survey was conducted after The New York Times reported last month that the president has paid little-to-no federal income taxes in recent years, including paying $750 during both 2016 and 2017. Trump in 2016 became the first major party presidential nominee in decades not to make any of their tax returns public. The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda has more here.
GOOD TO KNOW
- The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday charged Google with illegally maintaining a monopoly on search and search advertising, teeing off a legal battle likely to take years and send shockwaves across Silicon Valley.
- The state of New Jersey sued Navient on Tuesday, alleging that the student loan servicing company forced borrowers to pay and owe more money than necessary through misleading and deceptive practices.
- Several top business groups and universities teamed up to file a lawsuit on Monday against the Trump administration over additional immigration reforms aimed at making it more difficult for skilled foreign workers to acquire visas.
ODDS AND ENDS
- Berkshire Hathaway is expected to pay more than $4.1 million to settle allegations that a Turkish subsidiary of the company may have violated U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday.
- Lobbying activity during the third quarter of 2020 surpassed last year’s levels as companies, trade associations and local governments relied on K Street for help securing additional coronavirus relief and preparing for various election outcomes.