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Don’t get your hopes up, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled Thursday ahead of what could be the first serious signs of life for coronavirus aid stimulus talks in weeks.
Pelosi is set to speak by phone with Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, at around 2:30 p.m. Eastern time in what could be a re-opening of negotiations that have been at a standstill for weeks.
“That could be very short conversation if they’re not ready to meet in the middle,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill.
The talk will come amid renewed rumblings that Republicans in the U.S. Senate, who have been in many ways bystanders to the talks between Pelosi, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the Trump administration, are trying to coalesce around a narrower bill than the House Democrats’ $3.4 trillion one passed in May in their chamber.
While Pelosi has said Republicans should not bother to try to re-start talks unless they come up from the approximately $1.1 trillion price tag of their initial proposals, she said it was unclear if the new overture was a sign that had happened.
“We’re not budging,” she said. “They have to move.”
“Why shouldn’t there be a bill that has more or less than what the public needs? We have that responsibility. They just have to come up with more money,” she said.
President Trump took executive actions in early August to allow employers to defer payroll tax withholding temporarily, provide added money to recipients of jobless benefits and to stem evictions after talks faltered. But many experts say those efforts are slow to get off the ground and will not provide the support a second big stimulus package would have.
The CARES Act enacted into law in March was projected by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to cost about $1.7 trillion.
