After stimulus relief bill negotiations collapsed last week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is blasting the GOP for their failure to bring aid to the American people. On Monday, Schumer, one of four lawmakers who had been at the negotiations table, criticized their inaction and failure, pointing to the GOP’s delay in bringing forth a proposal as well as the number of Republicans who are reportedly unwilling to vote for any coronavirus relief package.
Senate GOP delayed for months, failed to come up with a proposal that had the support of their own caucus, then left it for someone else to figure out.
Even now, Sen. McConnell has said 20 GOP senators won’t vote for any more COVID relief.
Dems won’t stop fighting for action.
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) August 11, 2020
In his tweet, Schumer condemned the GOP for waiting weeks to take any further action on the economic crisis. Less than two months after President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act, Democrats had introduced another relief proposal, the HEROES Act. That bill had passed the House, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had refused to bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Instead, the GOP had waited until July to be crafting their own proposal, revealing the HEALS Act on July 27, less than two weeks before Congress’ scheduled recess, something that had drawn criticism from Democrats.
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Schumer also took aim at remarks McConnell had made regarding Republicans’ unwillingness to approve further aid. Speaking to WHAS, a Kentucky radio station, in late July as negotiations continue, McConnell had claimed that 15-20 Republican senators, more than a third of Republican senators, “are not going to vote for anything. … It’s a statement of the obvious that we will not have everybody on our side.”
Since negotiations failed, Schumer has been a vocal critic and has even denounced Trump’s singing of executive orders. Speaking on ABC’s This Week Sunday about the directives, Schumer dubbed them “paltry … unworkable, weak and far too narrow” a solution properly addresses the current economic crisis. He said that Trump’s Saturday signing ceremony was “a big show, but it doesn’t do anything” and that “if the American people look at these executive orders, they’ll see that they don’t come close to doing the job.”
In response, Schumer has called for Republicans to again join him and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in continuing negotiations in an effort to reach a deal on a more sweeping relief bill. Schumer told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that he hoped “saner voices in the Republican Party will prevail and say, ‘Sit down with Pelosi and sit down with Schumer.’” He said that Republicans “have to meet us in the middle. They just can’t come to the table and say, ‘It’s my way or the highway.’”
