Read on Twitter
Please do not slip back into bothsides coverage. https://twitter.com/ericawerner/status/1326927390321373184
To recap, the D-controlled House *passed* two Covid relief bills; the R-controlled Senate hasn’t taken one up yet. The Trump White House repeatedly calls off negotiations with the House; when talks do go forward, the Senate refuses to attend.
The biggest apparent problem in the process is that the Republican leadership in the Senate does not have enough votes in its own conference to pass any relief bill and is unwilling to pass a bill (and potentially defeat its own members’ filibuster$ with Democratic votes.
Accordingly, McConnell has been almost entirely disengaged from the issue, aside from the occasional press release and a proposal that lacked his own party’s support. He doesn’t bring anything to the floor, doesn’t allow committee work, doesn’t go to meetings.
Before the election, with Republicans unable to move anything themselves, the big gambit was to see if Pelosi would pass McConnell’s proposal *before* he put it on the senate floor.
McConnell’s proposal is chock full of poison pills for D members, like corporate liability protection for covid claims, and Pelosi wouldn’t do it. To that extent, Ds are dug in. But it pales in comparison to R Senators neither moving their own bills nor working on a compromise.
