More than a month after the COVID-19 federal relief package lapsed, the Republican-controlled Senate has failed to pass additional emergency funding amidst a historic health crisis that has now killed nearly 190,000 people and sickened more than 6 million in the U.S.
On Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will hold a vote on a $500-billion coronavirus relief package— but Democratic leaders Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the legislation is "headed nowhere."
McConnell called the legislation "a new targeted proposal, focused on some of the very most urgent healthcare, education, and economic issues."
"It does not contain every idea our party likes. I am confident the Democrats will feel the same," the Kentucky Republican said in a statement. "Yet Republicans believe the may serious differences between our two parties should not stand in the way of agreeing where we can agree and making law that helps our nation."
Schumer and Pelosi blasted the bill—calling it "emaciated" and "only intended to help vulnerable Republican Senators" ahead of the November election, less than two months away.
"In May, while the American people and small businesses were crying out for help in dealing with a pandemic and recession, Sen. McConnell dismissed their needs, saying that Senate Republicans would 'take a pause' and 'wait and see,'" Schumer and Pelosi said in a joint statement. The coronavirus relief package that passed in the House, called the HEROES Act, has languished in the Senate since May.
"As they scramble to make up for this historic mistake, Senate Republicans appear dead-set on another bill which doesn’t come close to addressing the problems and is headed nowhere," they added.
On Labor Day, New York's congressional leaders vowed to reject any legislation without adequate city and state funds as well as mass transit.
"The House already passed a stimulus that covers the critical state and local programs relied on by millions of New Yorkers, including unemployment support and funds for MTA," Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Manhattan Democrat, said in a statement. "Anything less is completely unacceptable and we will not let McConnell and the Republicans pay lip service when people are in dire need of federal aid."
Negotiations in Congress have been at a standstill since early August. The CARES Act lapsed in late July–ending the weekly $600 pandemic unemployment payments ended. In response, President Donald Trump signed a legally dubious executive action that cut the pandemic unemployment payments in half, which New Yorkers have yet to receive.
"Administering the Lost Wages Assistance program is made even more complex by the federal administration's inability to work with congress and the President's attempt to cover for this failure with a haphazard executive order," New York State Department of Labor spokesperson Deanna Cohen said in an emailed statement, explaining the delays. She added that 19 out of 41 states have not released a date for the payments while figuring out how make the unemployment systems work, and New York has a higher number of people seeking unemployment compared to states already paying out the federal $300.
The new legislation from McConnell would extend the $300 weekly unemployment payments under legislation rather than executive action, as well as allocate additional funds for the Paycheck Protection Program, child care support, schools, coronavirus testing, tracing, and vaccine development, and other measures, according to the Washington Post. But it fails to allocate money for cities and states or another round of $1,200 stimulus checks. It is also a far cry from the $2 or $3 trillion package Democrats previously proposed.
While additional federal aid for New York is stalled, Governor Andrew Cuomo continues to resist calls to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy to help meet budget needs. Currently, the state is facing a two-year $30 billion budget-hole. The MTA has said it needs $12 billion.
During a news conference in Manhattan on Tuesday, Cuomo told reporters: "It's not as simple as if we got a big check tomorrow, all our problems would go away."
"Crime, homeless, qualify of life, the cleanliness—it's all of this together," he said, noting a number of issues he says would push the wealthy out of New York. Cuomo emphasized his focus is on pushing the federal government to "give us the resources we need," and said any billionaires or multi-millionaires tax should be done nationwide.
A coalition of lawmakers and advocacy groups have reignited a push for taxes on the ultra-wealthy—including a tax on billionaires to fund relief for people typically excluded from government assistance programs.
"We could be generating billions and billions of dollars to prevent many of these cuts that are being proposed and are happening right now," Ron Deutsch, the executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, told the NY Times. "The governor should be talking more about shared sacrifice right now than just talking about protecting the wealthiest among us."
In NYC, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said some 22,000 layoffs could be possible without federal relief or borrowing authority from the state.
Andrew Rein, of the Citizens Budget Commission, says the absence of federal aid "makes the city's job much harder."
"It will have to manage much more tightly, prioritize essential services for needy New Yorkers now, manage even better so that New York can come out of this stable and competitive and able to help people," said Rein, adding that any federal aid that does come should be a "bridge" to recovery—and the city should be identifying other ways to save now, leaving borrowing as a "last resort."
