After the bill fell apart in the Senate Sunday evening, senators have been scrambling to draft a new coronavirus stimulus bill. President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin want to give $1200 to each American as part of their coronavirus response plan. However, the bill has been struggling to pass the Senate.
The bill was initially expected to cost billions. Then it was projected to cost $1 trillion. It quickly ballooned to become a monstrous $2 trillion emergency funding bill. The reason the bill collapsed entirely on Sunday evening? The republicans included nearly a trillion dollars for corporate bailouts, with no guidelines for how the money was to be spent.
Democrats in the Senate were unwilling to pass a massive spending bill that promised money to giant corporations. That is, they were unwilling to pass it without a promise of how those companies would spend the money.
Without guarantees that the companies would use the bailout money to secure the finances of their employees, democrats feared the bailouts would simply be used to line CEOs pockets. Without a clear definition of the current workings of payroll companies tend to do shady things.
Republicans quickly tried to paint the democrats’ hesitance as partisan and obstructionist. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been accused by Senate democrats of locking them out of early negotiations, though he maintains that speed is of the essence with the spending bill.
Democrats are hesitant to jump on the Republican version of the stimulus bill. But McConnell is anxious to pass it.
After the aggressive timing of the first vote on Sunday, McConnell tried to schedule another vote for Monday morning. This would be just minutes after the stock market opens. Senate Democrats blocked this, however, wanting more involvement in drafting the bill before voting on it again.
“I think there’s a good chance we’ll have an agreement. But we don’t need artificial deadlines. We will get this done. We will come in at noon. And hopefully we will have an agreement by then,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer stated.
McConnell slammed Schumer on Monday. He said that this could panic the markets that would spend three hours open without knowing if the stimulus bill was coming.
The vote will occur at 1 p.m. on Monday. This makes it significantly later in the day than McConnell’s original timing. Senate republicans are anxious to soothe the panicked stock market. The market has all but buckled under the massive financial impact of the novel coronavirus.
