Confusion Surrounds Stimulus Talks, $200 Trump Cards

Confusion Surrounds Stimulus Talks, $200 Trump Cards

This is my stimulus update for Friday, October 9.

Now, just real quick, reports are that White House officials are scrambling to get the Trump cards, the $200 cards for senior Medicare recipients, out before Election Day, and right now officials are trying to figure out how to get Trump’s name on the cards.

Yes, this is where we’re at, people.  Next week the White House also wants to send letters to the eventual recipients of these cards basically talking up Trump’s executive order that I mentioned recently on the channel that attempts to lower drug prices.

I think they’re doing that because they know it might be tough to actually get these cards out before the election and so sending this letter is the next best thing.  The administration estimates that these letters will cost 19 million dollars to distribute.

Amtrak sent letters to Congress yesterday asking for nearly five billion dollars to prevent 2400 layoffs and substantial cuts to improvements to their systems.

So that brings us to stimulus talks.  Let’s recap really quickly, after killing stimulus negotiations on Tuesday, Trump said yesterday morning on Fox Business that they are back on.

There has been speculation that Pelosi would be open to a standalone deal because last week some of her statements made it sound like she would be open to a standalone deal for airlines right now.

But yesterday Pelosi clarified that she would not be open to a standalone airlines bill nor a skinny bill consisting only of PPP, stimulus checks, and airline help, so Pelosi has essentially confirmed that as far as she is concerned, it’s comprehensive stimulus package or bust.  And then to make things even more confusing, Mnuchin and Pelosi spoke yesterday about a comprehensive bill, which Mnuchin wants, while meanwhile White House communications director Alyssa Farah told reporters that right now the White House only wants a skinny deal that only includes PPP, stimulus checks, and airline aid, thereby contradicting Mnuchin, and Pelosi’s team was quick to point that out.

Pelosi told reporters yesterday that she and the White House are continuing the conversation and have made some progress.  Also, the talk is that some in the White House have been speaking to congressional Republicans about a new skinny bill, which would of course likely be just another messaging bill.  Speaking of congressional Republicans, looming over all these talks is Mitch McConnell, who frankly wouldn’t be thrilled by a large, comprehensive stimulus bill because he knows he’d have a devil of a time trying to get enough Republican senators to push it through.

But nevertheless, I think Mitch speaks for all of us when he said yesterday in Kentucky that the stimulus discussions “from day-to-day can be confusing for all of us to follow.”  And if you just think of what’s on the Senate’s plate right now, they have Judge Barrett’s confirmation that Trump wants done before the election, and then on top of that passing a bipartisan stimulus bill that doesn’t even exist yet that would have been negotiated without any congressional Republicans in the room, McConnell would need to round up at least a handful of Republican senators?

There are 25 days until the election, that seems like a tall order to me, I don’t know about you.  So maybe that’s why Mitch just said this morning that a coronavirus stimulus package is “unlikely in the next three weeks.”

Well, taking him literally, three weeks from today is October 30, so was he just saying “three weeks” as shorthand for “before the election,” or is he kind of implying that a package will get through the week of the election?  In any case, with this kind of energy from Mitch, I believe that Trump himself would have to work the Senate Republicans, quite frankly, in order to get a bipartisan stimulus bill through if Steve and Nancy are even able to come up with a stimulus bill in the next couple weeks or so.

What’s Pelosi up to today?  Well, today House Democrats are discussing the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, which has to do with what happens when the President is unable to do his job, but Pelosi did not speculate as to whether it will come into play any time soon.  Pelosi wants to introduce legislation today that would create a “Commission on Presidential Capacity.”

We know that Pelosi has been talking about Trump being on meds right now, and I’m sure this is a play off of that. Trump has countered back in a tweet, “Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation.”