money Congress continues to negotiate second stimulus package
As Congress works to pass another round of stimulus, Senate Republicans share their complaints on what to include in the package. Yahoo Finance’s Jessica Smith discusses.
Video Transcript
- And we'll come back to Yahoo Finance On The Move. We want to go to Washington DC. And Jessica Smith, and help us understand, is 400 the new 600?
JESSICA SMITH: We'll see. Democratic lawmakers don't really have an incentive to give in to the requests that Politico is reporting from the White House that they have offered to take extra unemployment benefit down from 600 to 400. Again, that's a Politico report. But there are some Republicans who have proposed extending the $600 through the end of the year. So Democratic lawmakers don't really have an incentive to give in on that.
Both sides have said that they are going to try and finalize a deal by the end of the week. So they kind of agree on a timeline, at least a goal for a timeline, but they have not agreed on substance. There are still a lot of issues to work out. Here is Speaker Pelosi talking to reporters after meeting with the administration yesterday.
NANCY PELOSI: We agree that we want to have an agreement. And in that case, we then say that's their goal let's engineer back from there as to what we have to do to get that done. Now Leader Schumer and I are legislators with long experience in writing legislation. We know that the devil is in the details. So are the angels.
JESSICA SMITH: Now Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did just speak on the floor a little bit ago and he says that there is still a fundamental difference, a fundamental disagreement in the scope of, and severity of the problem and the solution. So that still sounds like a pretty big issue for these negotiators to work through. He says that they are making progress, but still far apart. He highlighted some of the differences, being enhanced unemployment, state and local funding and money for tracing and testing.
Now treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters yesterday that Republicans made an offer on the unemployment insurance, as we mentioned at the top there. And then he also agreed to extend the eviction moratorium through the end of the year. So they are set to meet again today. We'll see if they make any more progress this week.
