Daily US Times: On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin must reach an agreement within 48 hours if they want to pass a Covid-19 stimulus relief bill before Election Day.
Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.”: “The 48 only relates to if we want to get it done before the election, which we do.”
“But we’re saying to them we have to freeze the design on some of these things. Are we going with it or not? And what is the language.”
The Speaker of the House is putting pressure on the Trump administration to cut a deal by Tuesday because the legislative process in the Senate and House will take time to play out. Ms Pelosi said it won’t be feasible to get a bill passed through both chambers by November 3 if the talks drag on beyond the next couple days.
Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader, announced on Saturday there would be votes on stimulus relief packages, including a stand-alone Paycheck Protection Program bill to help small businesses, on Tuesday and Wednesday. But Democrats, who are expected to block the move of McConnell, have been pushing for a larger deal, banking on on-again, off-again talks that Pelosi has had with Mnuchin for months.
On Sunday, Pelosi’s office told that the 48 hours refers to the end of the day on Tuesday and that they need answers to key outstanding questions by that time or they won’t be able to get a bill passed before the election day. If a deal isn’t reached, negotiations would still continue after Tuesday, but it wouldn’t get done in time before Election Day.
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