House Speaker Nancy Pelosi blames GOP lawmakers’ unwillingness to “crush the virus” for the delay in coming to an agreement on a second COVID-19 relief package nearly nine months after the first was signed. With two proposals passed in by House Democrats in the months since the CARES Act went into effect, Pelosi said in an address Sunday after the roughly $900 billion compromise agreement was reached that the fault was on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and fellow Republican lawmakers.
“What took so long is because we could not get our Republican colleagues to crush the virus,” she said, as per CNN. “I couldn’t understand it – why would they not want to invest in the science that has told us so importantly that it require testing, tracing, treatment, separation, sanitation, and the rest.”
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Of the initial HEROES Act and then the smaller revision passed by House Democrats, Pelosi continued, “[Republicans] said we just made a light touch on your language on testing. No, 53% of it to take out everything that referred to minority communities. Communities of color were so hard-hit in all of this, and now we see why.”
“They didn’t believe in the science – we knew that – but they did believe in herd immunity,” she added. “And that’s why we never could come to that first pillar – crush the virus.” Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have both called for more action when it comes to combating the pandemic when President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January.
A joint statement from the pair said: “The emergency relief in this agreement, the second largest in history only to the CARES Act, is an important first step that Democrats look forward to building on under the new Biden-Harris Administration to meet the remaining needs of the American people during this historic health and economic crisis.”
Pelosi and Schumer are not the only Democratic leaders to blame the GOP for failed negotiations. “Let’s not forget that this is the same Mitch McConnell who has been holding up relief for 8 months while millions fall into poverty,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) tweeted in response to McConnell’s comments about the deal, with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) writing in his own reply, “Maybe sit this one out since you’re literally the reason it took so long?”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican, suggested that Pelosi was the “only reason” for the delay. “This COVID relief is good news for thousands of small businesses and workers who have hung on. But the truth is Congress could have done this deal months ago,” he tweeted.
