WASHINGTON — Senator Mitch McConnell has put himself in one of the toughest spots of a political life that has seen plenty of them.
Up for re-election in the middle of an unforgiving pandemic, the Kentucky Republican and majority leader is caught in a family feud between a group of endangered incumbents in his party who are desperate for pandemic relief legislation that is tied up in slogging negotiations, and a significant portion of Senate Republicans who would rather do nothing at all.
He is also up against Democratic leaders who do not see the need to give an inch on their own sweeping coronavirus relief priorities, administration negotiators who badly want a deal that boosts President Trump — even if it ends up being one that most Senate Republicans oppose — and the president himself, who has played his usual role of undercutting the talks at every turn.
All that is at stake is the health and economic state of the nation, control of the Senate and Mr. McConnell’s own reputation and future.
“It is a big moment, an important moment for the country,” said Mr. McConnell, who has been adept at striking last-minute, bipartisan tax and fiscal bargains in dire situations — but not in circumstances quite like the present. “It does happen to be occurring in closer proximity to the election than those other big deals.”
It is also a big moment for the top Senate Republican, who may end up having to pave the legislative way for a huge federal spending package that many in his party detest.
Mr. McConnell has only himself to thank for his predicament.
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through a sweeping, $3 trillion recovery measure in May and Democrats demanded for months that Republicans join them in mapping out a next phase of federal pandemic relief, Mr. McConnell instead hit the pause button, which he and his fellow Republicans said was necessary to assess how the nearly $3 trillion in aid already approved was working.
Visible in the background was the hope that the monthslong shutdown of the economy and stay-at-home orders would corral the spread of the coronavirus and spare Republicans from having to get behind another costly round of aid. That did not happen. Instead, the virus surged back in many parts of the country, many school systems announced they would stick with distance learning for the fall and the initial recovery started to slide.
“It allowed us to learn the coronavirus didn’t mysteriously disappear,” he said in an interview on Wednesday. “It is still here.”
But the delay meant that Republicans did not even present their aid proposals until days before expanded unemployment benefits that were cushioning millions of Americans from the worst of the recession were to expire. They lapsed last week with no ready replacement, and a small-business program considered crucial to preventing a total economic collapse is set to expire on Friday, leading Democrats to accuse Mr. McConnell of acting irresponsibly.
- A stalemate continues in the stimulus talks with a meeting set for later Thursday as Friday’s job report looms.
- ‘We have to try something different’: Experts call for a large-scale rethinking of the U.S. testing strategy.
- In a worrying sign, France and Germany record higher daily totals of new cases than they’ve seen in months.
“He’s not even sitting in the room,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said on Tuesday, suggesting that Mr. McConnell was unaware of the substance of the talks.
Ms. Pelosi has taken to referring to Mr. McConnell as Moscow Mitch, a name she knows he doesn’t appreciate, and in an appearance Wednesday on MSNBC ridiculed him for failing to deliver a Republican majority for his own proposal.
“As you have seen from the majority leader, Mr. McConnell, they don’t have the votes,” she said. “They have votes for practically nothing. They haven’t passed anything. They don’t even have the votes within their own 51.”
The situation has also left Senate Republicans up for re-election — who have already seen their political chances dragged down by Mr. Trump’s poor standing — with the unappealing prospect of facing voters in less than three months without having acted to address their most pressing economic and public health needs. Their demises could cost Republicans their Senate majority and Mr. McConnell his position. And while he is currently not regarded as particularly vulnerable to defeat, the Kentuckian is facing his own challenge from a Democrat, Amy McGrath, a well-financed former Marine fighter pilot.
Mr. McConnell insisted on Wednesday that his go-slow approach had been “the reasonable thing to do.”
“Pushing the pause button meant seeing how what we have already done is working,” said Mr. McConnell, whose office said that slightly more than $1 trillion of the original $2.6 trillion allocated for the pandemic response remained unspent. “This is not play money.”
Under the pressure of the expiring jobless pay and playing defense in the upcoming election, Senate Republicans came up with their own $1 trillion plan that would slash the jobless benefits — in an unworkable way, according to many experts — and failed to provide any of the $1 trillion in aid Democrats have demanded for struggling state and local governments.
Democrats rejected the proposal out of hand. But more troubling for Mr. McConnell was that a significant portion of his fellow Senate Republicans — he estimated 15 to 20 — made clear they won’t support any measure, a division that significantly weakened his hand in negotiating with Democrats, who already considered themselves in a position of strength.
“I do have a divided conference on whether to go forward,” Mr. McConnell said. “I personally think we need to do another bill.”
But, he added, “It is not an entirely irrational reaction when some of my members say they haven’t even spent what we already allocated.”
With his own members split, Mr. McConnell threw the talks over to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, drawing biting criticism from Democrats that the majority leader had relegated himself to the sidelines and was out of the loop.
Mr. McConnell sharply rejected that idea, seeming insulted that anyone would seriously believe he was not playing his usual leadership role. It would be counterproductive, he argued, to engage directly in the talks when the White House negotiators and the Democrats would have to reach an agreement that he would then try to sell to his own membership if he found it suitable. He said he was fully apprised of the substance of the bargaining.
“Every decision I make about this sort of thing is entirely calculated,” Mr. McConnell said. “It eliminates sitting there and having to listen to Pelosi and Schumer’s talking points, which gets in the way of serious discussion. Meadows and Mnuchin are not hiding the ball from me, and I’m not hiding the ball from my colleagues.”
While many Republicans might find fault with any eventual bill, most of his colleagues back Mr. McConnell’s approach.
The Coronavirus Outbreak ›
Frequently Asked Questions
Updated August 6, 2020
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Why are bars linked to outbreaks?
- Think about a bar. Alcohol is flowing. It can be loud, but it’s definitely intimate, and you often need to lean in close to hear your friend. And strangers have way, way fewer reservations about coming up to people in a bar. That’s sort of the point of a bar. Feeling good and close to strangers. It’s no surprise, then, that bars have been linked to outbreaks in several states. Louisiana health officials have tied at least 100 coronavirus cases to bars in the Tigerland nightlife district in Baton Rouge. Minnesota has traced 328 recent cases to bars across the state. In Idaho, health officials shut down bars in Ada County after reporting clusters of infections among young adults who had visited several bars in downtown Boise. Governors in California, Texas and Arizona, where coronavirus cases are soaring, have ordered hundreds of newly reopened bars to shut down. Less than two weeks after Colorado’s bars reopened at limited capacity, Gov. Jared Polis ordered them to close.
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I have antibodies. Am I now immune?
- As of right now, that seems likely, for at least several months. There have been frightening accounts of people suffering what seems to be a second bout of Covid-19. But experts say these patients may have a drawn-out course of infection, with the virus taking a slow toll weeks to months after initial exposure. People infected with the coronavirus typically produce immune molecules called antibodies, which are protective proteins made in response to an infection. These antibodies may last in the body only two to three months, which may seem worrisome, but that’s perfectly normal after an acute infection subsides, said Dr. Michael Mina, an immunologist at Harvard University. It may be possible to get the coronavirus again, but it’s highly unlikely that it would be possible in a short window of time from initial infection or make people sicker the second time.
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I’m a small-business owner. Can I get relief?
- The stimulus bills enacted in March offer help for the millions of American small businesses. Those eligible for aid are businesses and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 500 workers, including sole proprietorships, independent contractors and freelancers. Some larger companies in some industries are also eligible. The help being offered, which is being managed by the Small Business Administration, includes the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program. But lots of folks have not yet seen payouts. Even those who have received help are confused: The rules are draconian, and some are stuck sitting on money they don’t know how to use. Many small-business owners are getting less than they expected or not hearing anything at all.
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What are my rights if I am worried about going back to work?
- Employers have to provide a safe workplace with policies that protect everyone equally. And if one of your co-workers tests positive for the coronavirus, the C.D.C. has said that employers should tell their employees -- without giving you the sick employee’s name -- that they may have been exposed to the virus.
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What is school going to look like in September?
- It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. California’s two largest public school districts — Los Angeles and San Diego — said on July 13, that instruction will be remote-only in the fall, citing concerns that surging coronavirus infections in their areas pose too dire a risk for students and teachers. Together, the two districts enroll some 825,000 students. They are the largest in the country so far to abandon plans for even a partial physical return to classrooms when they reopen in August. For other districts, the solution won’t be an all-or-nothing approach. Many systems, including the nation’s largest, New York City, are devising hybrid plans that involve spending some days in classrooms and other days online. There’s no national policy on this yet, so check with your municipal school system regularly to see what is happening in your community.
“I think that the leader wants to be assured that whatever comes out is something that gets signed,” Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, told reporters on Wednesday. “Mnuchin and Meadows report back. It’s like he’s in the room, even though he’s not.”
Mr. McConnell said that he talked to Mr. Trump frequently and that they consulted by phone on Wednesday as they also celebrated a Kansas primary victory that put Senate Republicans in better position to hold on to a seat there. He said the president’s commitment to getting an agreement was illustrated by the fact that he had dispatched two top advisers to handle the negotiations.
Still, the president has not tried to hide his disdain for Mr. McConnell’s proposal. Mr. Trump called the plan “semi-irrelevant” when it was rolled out. He blasted Senate Republicans for backing away from his demand that they include money for construction of a new F.B.I. building across the street from his hotel in downtown Washington, saying that they should “go back to school and learn.” He has sent mixed signals on the only provision that Mr. McConnell has called a “red line” in the measure — a broad legal liability shield for businesses — and clung to a payroll tax cut that everyone else has already dismissed.
The fight over the package has spurred some bitter attacks from both sides, with Mr. McConnell accusing Mr. Schumer of single-handedly blocking a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and Mr. Schumer regularly castigating Mr. McConnell for steering clear of the talks.
“It strains reason for Leader McConnell to criticize those of us who are actually engaged in negotiations while he is intentionally staying out of them,” Mr. Schumer said Wednesday on the Senate floor, accusing Mr. McConnell of “‘Alice in Wonderland’ rhetoric.”
Despite the back-and-forth, Mr. McConnell predicted that an agreement could still be reached given the national and political imperatives at work. Failure would most likely take a toll on Republicans whose prospects for holding the Senate are already in jeopardy. But if a deal materializes, he said, it will not be, as he has repeatedly said recently, a kumbaya moment and support will be fractured.
“If I were betting, I would bet we do get an outcome,” he said. “I would still bet we have a good chance of getting a result.”
For now, however, that agreement remains elusive.
Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a top McConnell ally, noted that Mr. McConnell had proved himself a legislative magician in the past, able to conjure a rabbit from a hat.
“I keep asking if he feels any fuzzy ears,” Mr. Cornyn said. “But he said he can’t feel any fuzzy ears right now.”
Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.
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