Senate GOP, White House reach tentative $1 trillion pact to break coronavirus aid logjam

WASHINGTON — Senate Republicans announced Wednesday evening they have “reached a fundamental agreement” with White House negotiators on how to move forward with a coronavirus relief bill.

After the third meeting this week, Senate Appropriations Chair Shelby, R-Ala., HELP Committee Chair Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., emerged from the negotiating room with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows saying they are “completely on the same page” and “in good shape.”

The tentative framework between the White House and Senate comes amid tensions in the party on how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic that is forcing states to reevaluate their reopenings and address the growing number of cases and deaths.

The legislation remains fluid and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has indicated he wants to keep the price tag to $1 trillion. Republicans aren’t all on the same page as some have denounced the price tag amid a soaring national debt. But the latest talks show some signs of breaking an intraparty logjam that has kept negotiations at a dead stop for weeks.

The new proposal will serve as a starting point for negotiations with Democrats, who have passed a $3.4 trillion bill in the House and been pressuring the GOP to move quickly on new aid as COVID-19 cases and deaths rise in the United States.

The Republicans intend to release their plan Thursday, but in “a handful of bills now instead of just one bill,” Blunt told reporters.

“So we’ll have one appropriations bill, we’ll have several authorization bills that explain in more detail how that appropriated money will be spent, and obviously there will be a bill that will talk about any money that is distributed in direct payments or any other way,” he said.

TESTING

Negotiators agreed on $16 billion to go towards testing as part of the Republican proposal, but they plan to offer $9 billion in previously appropriated funds and $16 billion in new funding. The combination of funds is a compromise reached between the Trump administration, which wanted to zero-out funding for testing, and Senate Republicans who wanted $25 billion.

Because the administration is opposed to running a national testing program, funding for testing will be focused on schools, day care centers, nursing homes and senior centers.

“I think it’s helpful to get down to what we were really talking about — a sense of the preeminent federal responsibility would be on the testing front and more clearly defining,” Blunt told reporters. “I think the real focus of the federal responsibility for testing would be primarily focused on senior facilities, on schools, and on child care centers with other testing assistance.”

SCHOOLS

As part of the preliminary agreement struck late Wednesday, Republican negotiators agreed to $70 billion for K-12 education for all schools on a per capita basis, with half of that money going to covering costs for schools that have reopened.

In addition, $30 billion will be doled out to colleges and universities — not to be tied to reopening, a Senate aide confirms to NBC News. The last $5 billion will be for Governors to allocate how they see fit.

McConnell on Tuesday indicated that Republicans are preparing to send $105 billion so that schools can “safely reopen” — $5 billion greater than what was originally proposed by Democrats. Democrats, however, are now calling for more than $400 billion in school funding.

“We’ve agreed on the school front on ways to get people back to school and encourage them to go back to and to attending school, at school, as much as possible,” Blunt said. “We’ll have some money that will be distributed to all districts and other money distributed (to) districts that get back to school in a more traditional sense.”

STIMULUS CHECKS

Mnuchin told reporters on Wednesday that negotiators also agreed to provide Americans with another round of direct payments, something the administration has been pushing for weeks. The details however have yet to be settled upon.

Asked if there is a consensus on an amount, Mnuchin said, “I’m not going to get into specifics right now, but there is an agreement.”

It is not clear at this point, however, whether the terms of the direct payments will mirror those of the initial package in March – something that Democrats want in a future aid package.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE & PAYROLL TAX CUT

While Republicans spent the majority of Wednesday floating the idea of a short-term extension on enhanced unemployment insurance benefits, the White House seemed to cool on the proposal.

“We’re really looking at trying to make sure that we have a comprehensive bill that that deals with the issues,” Meadows told NBC. “Any short term extensions would defy the history of Congress, which would indicate that it would just be met with another short term extension.”

The $600-a-week payment for jobless Americans is set to run dry at the end of the month, and with no extension, could lag until Republicans come to a broader consensus.

And there was no agreement of a payroll tax cut, a top priority for the Administration and only a handful of Republicans.

“We really are not in a position to talk any specifics,” Meadows said. “We’re going let Leader McConnell talk about that after he actually has a more thorough conversation with his senators.”