House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has laid out the terms that would bring her back to the stimulus negotiations. The talks collapsed on Thursday, with the Senate adjourning until Sept. 8, and leaving people across the U.S. in dire financial straits without relief amid the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday, Pelosi did explain
“I think something was wrong with his statement,” Pelosi told reporters, via Just the News. She also said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that Democrats would come down from their $3.4 – $3.7 trillion HEROES Act and meet Senate Republicans in the middle. The (mostly) GOP-backed HEALS Act “When they’re ready to do that we’ll sit down,” she said. “We are miles apart in our values.”
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The HEALS Act was introduced in late July with a $1 trillion price tag as a “starting point,” according to Mnuchin. The HEROES Act, which was co-sponsored by Pelosi, would cost more than three times that amount. Despite the bill being passed by the House in May, it was deemed “dead on arrival” in the Senate. As the Speaker points out, Democrats’ goal is to split the difference on cost, which she claims the Republicans are unwilling to do.
On Thursday, Pelosi shared a tweet that detailed the difference between the relief Democrats are proposing vs. what the GOP is offering, with the Democrat side closely aligning with the HEROES Act. During the now-stalled negotiations, Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer proposed more than $60 billion dollars would be provided for anti-hunger and food assistance, whereas the GOP is only seeking to provide $250,000. At least according to Pelosi’s tweet.
Pelosi had previously slammed this “meager” proposal when speaking on The ReidOut, criticizing Republicans for not having “money for children who are food insecure but did have a tax deduction for business lunches that cost a half a billion dollars to give.” The tweet also noted that Democrats are seeking to include provisions targeting anti-eviction and rent assistance in a future relief bill, the GOP include nothing of the sort in their proposal.
After the negotiations tanked, President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting evictions, which Schumer called out as “less of an executive order and more of an ‘executive suggestion,’” as it “doesn’t even guarantee a moratorium on evictions, let alone identify specific funds to help people who’ve fallen behind on rent.” Some reports have suggested that as many as 40 million Americans could be evicted before the end of the year without some kind of federal assistance.
