The House has passed their updated, smaller “HEROES 2.0” COVID-19 relief bill that was introduced earlier this week. The largely symbolic bill passed 214-207 on party lines. The Senate is not expected to take action on the legislation.
Negotiations continue between Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Mnuchin, however there is about a $1 trillion difference in their proposals.
Full story here.
The House passed a continuing resolution (“CR”), H.R. 8337, to fund the Federal Government through December 11th, 2020 and avoid a potential shutdown. The bipartisan resolution passed 359-57 and is part of a deal reached by House Democrats, Senate Republicans, and the Administration. The CR must still pass in the Senate and be signed by the President. The full story is available here.
As of now, all 12 FY 2021 appropriations bills have passed in the House, but none have passed in the Senate, indicating a likely long road ahead.
After adopting a four-bill spending package for FY2021 last week, the House is currently scheduled to take up an even larger seven-bill “minibus” later this week, H.R. 7617.The legislation combines the FY2021 Defense, Commerce-Justice-Science, Energy and Water Development, Labor-HHS-Education, Financial Services-General Government, Homeland Security, and Transportation-HUD measures. As we noted last week, the Senate has yet to move on even a single spending bill.
Meanwhile, over the on the Senate side of the Capitol, we may finally see this week a set of proposals that represents the Senate Republican wish list for a “COVID 4.0” relief package. The Senate Republican leadership had hoped to unveil something last week but could not work out differences among themselves and with the White House. The goal is to unveil a proposal this week so that they can start negotiating with the Democratic House, which passed the the HEROES Act in May as its marker for negotiations. There is pressure to act as quickly as possible as a number of benefits from the CARES Act are scheduled to expire very soon, including expanded unemployment benefits.
As noted this morning, negotiators had been working to reach an agreement on the next COVID-19-related bill, scheduling a Senate session for this afternoon. A deal has officially been reached on the legislation.
The $484-billion measure includes, among other provisions:
The bill does not include any additional funds for states and localities.
Senate Democrats are calling this package an “interim” measure, fully expecting to take up a “Phase 4” bill later this spring.
The Senate is scheduled to meet at 4 PM EDT with the hopes of passing the bill by unanimous consent.
As noted earlier this morning, the Senate passed the $2-trillion relief package last night by a vote of 96 to 0. Before the vote on final passage, there was plenty of last-minute drama that had to be addressed.
One of the late issues was raised by a group of conservative Senators who raised objections to provisions in the bill that would both extend the length of eligibility for unemployment benefits as well as the size of the unemployment checks. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) countered by asserting that he would hold up progress on the legislation if those provisions were changed. Ultimately, the group of conservatives was allowed to offer an amendment that would have decreased the benefits, which was defeated. Following that, the Senate approved the bill 96 to 0.
Even as the Senate was debating the package, questions swirled about how the House would take it up, as most Members are currently back in their districts and face difficult choices about whether and how to return to Washington to vote. At this point, the House is scheduled to bring up the bill on Friday and will seek to pass it by voice vote rather than take a roll call vote.
Read more about the behind the scenes debates and conversations in: