With the election over, the Senate majority leader says it’s time to (finally) move on a bill.
The election is over! The votes will now be counted and recounted, and everyone will send the lawyers in. But it looks like Kanye lost, Joe Biden is momentarily up on Donald Trump, the House is going to remain in Democratic hands, and the Republicans will hold the Senate.
What does that mean for another coronavirus economic relief package? Queue Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who won re-election Tuesday night:
Finally. As the Trump administration and House Democrats reached a stalemate on another relief bill in the weeks leading up to the election, Senate Republicans pushed their own, smaller bill:
While criticizing Pelosi’s demands, McConnell did try to advance a much smaller bill on the Senate floor that had no state or local aid at all but he was blocked by Democrats.
The small McConnell bill also omitted $1,200 checks to individuals — even though McConnell has said he favors sending out another round of those, and Democrats and Trump also favor doing so.
Now he’s saying aid to local governments is back on the table, as is an increased unemployment benefit for the millions of Americans who have been churned out of their jobs by the coronavirus slowdown.
With the Senate Republicans on board, there’s at least hope that economic relief won’t have to wait until after the presidential inauguration and a new Congress. You’ll see more business interest groups publicly stumping for a deal. Momentum is building, and that’s good. Tens of millions of Americans are out of work, and countless businesses are in danger of going under. People need help.
The Alliance for American Manufacturing is also still calling for industrial policy to be included in any relief package. That means an infrastructure package, strong Buy America rules to run with it, a “whole of government” approach to reshoring manufacturing capacity, and tying recovery money to domestic job creation.
Here’s what (part of what) we wrote to Congress in July:
Jobs created or supported should be those of American workers; and critical supply chains strengthened by federal dollars should be those here in America.
Read the whole thing here.