‘We’re very far apart,’ said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of negotiations with White House officials.
Photo: ting shen/EPA/ShutterstockWASHINGTON—Talks between White House officials and Democratic leaders on a new coronavirus-aid package ended late Thursday without a breakthrough as both sides edged closer to the Trump administration’s Friday deadline for reaching a deal or leaving the bargaining table.
In postmeeting remarks to reporters, the two sides blamed each other, with White House officials saying that Democrats were unwilling to compromise and Democrats countering that the White House had refused to recognize the severity of the country’s economic and health crisis. Both accused each other of not moving enough in bridging the $1 trillion proposed by Senate Republicans and the $3.5 trillion backed by Democrats.
“We’re still a considerable amount apart in terms of a compromise that could be signed into law,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said after leaving a meeting with Democratic leaders. “The differences are still significant.”
“We’re very far apart,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said that, “They were unwilling to meet in the middle. They said it mostly had to be their way.”
Mr. Meadows said the priority remains reaching a broad deal, but President Trump has also authorized seeking a narrower deal, an approach Democrats have rejected. Mr. Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said they planned to brief Mr. Trump late Thursday on the state of talks.
Mr. Mnuchin cited large differences over the Democrats’ push to appropriate $1 trillion for state and local governments, part of their measure that passed the House in May. “The president is not going to do a deal that has a massive amount of money to bail out state and local,” he said.
President Trump has said he is considering circumventing Congress and using executive actions to provide jobless aid, suspend the payroll tax, impose a partial moratorium on evictions and assist with student loan payments. The White House hasn’t disclosed details of how such actions would be put into place. Democrats have suggested that the White House is bluffing, saying it only has powers to limit evictions and would face legal and logistical hurdles in pursuing other actions.
“I don’t think they know what they are talking about,” Mrs. Pelosi told reporters. “The one thing the president can do is to extend the moratorium and that would be a good thing, if there is money to go with it,” she said, referring to Democrats’ calls to also provide assistance to landlords to cover missed rent.
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The relief bill passed in March banned landlords from evicting people in rental properties that receive federal assistance or federally-connected financing. That moratorium ended in late July.
In March, the administration suspended foreclosures and evictions of homeowners with mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, a move that applied to more than eight million homes. The Federal Housing Finance Agency also directed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop foreclosures and evictions of homeowners.
On jobless aid, which provided $600 a week until it expired last week, the White House is considering using unspent money from the earlier Cares Act legislation to help states restore benefits, according to people familiar with the matter.
White House spokesman Judd Deere said a legislative solution was the goal, but Mr. Trump was “fully prepared to use his executive authority to help those who continue to be impacted.”
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The president told reporters on Thursday that he could sign executive orders as soon as Friday or Saturday if the negotiations don’t show signs of progress.
The prospect of Mr. Trump taking action put new pressure Thursday on Democratic leaders and White House officials trying to hash out a deal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said he was delaying the start of the Senate’s summer recess, set to begin after close of business Thursday, but it was unclear when lawmakers would actually be called back for votes.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R., Utah) said Senate Republicans were dispersing, but would be updated in daily 5 p.m. conference calls with GOP leaders and White House officials.
Mr. McConnell and Mr. Trump met Thursday to discuss the state of the negotiations, a White House official said.
Democrats said Thursday that the slow pace of progress in the talks stems from a central clash over how much assistance the federal government should provide.
“We Democrats believe the patient needs a major operation, while Republicans want to apply a Band-Aid and we won’t let them just pass the Band-Aid, go home and still leave America bleeding,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday.
Mr. McConnell said Democrats had been refusing to compromise in the talks. He agreed with Mr. Schumer that the talks had stalled because of an overarching disagreement over how much aid was warranted.
“The argument is over how much is appropriate at this particular juncture as we struggle to get the economy back on its feet and get the country in a place where it can sustain itself until we get a vaccine,” Mr. McConnell said Thursday on CNBC.
The hardening stances prompted some pessimism on Capitol Hill about negotiators’ prospects of reaching a deal.
“We’re at an impasse right now,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby (R., Ala.) told reporters. “At the moment, it doesn’t look promising.”
Some Republicans also expressed skepticism about Mr. Trump’s plans to employ executive orders as a fallback.
“Can you legally do it? I’m for a payroll-tax cut. I just am very cautious about executive orders,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). “You know, I don’t want to bless one I like because it may open up the floodgates for things I don’t like.”
Congress has already authorized about $3 trillion in new spending since March to help mitigate the impact of coronavirus shutdowns, including stimulus checks and jobless payments to American households and emergency loans and grants to struggling businesses and state and local governments.
Republicans had entered negotiations with a $1 trillion plan, though the proposal faces opposition within the Senate GOP, due to growing concerns about heavy new deficit spending. Democrats say Republicans are taking too narrow an approach, omitting such items as additional funding for states and local governments.
The two sides have remained far apart on how much to spend in federal jobless assistance, which provided $600 a week before it expired in July. Republicans said that level has paid some people more to stay at home than to work, providing a disincentive to return to work. Democrats have pushed back against such arguments.
Studies have found many workers were taking in more in jobless aid than their prior pay, but economists say they haven’t seen evidence the assistance was affecting the rate at which people are returning to work.
In the talks, White House negotiators have offered to provide weekly checks of $400—down from the recently expired level but higher than Republicans’s initial $200 proposal, according to a person familiar with the negotiations. Democrats haven’t budged from their demand of $600.
Also looming is the application deadline Saturday for the Paycheck Protection Program, designed to help small businesses keep workers on payroll. In the Senate, lawmakers have been trying to strike an agreement to extend the program, which still has more than $100 billion remaining, and allow small businesses to have more access to the program.
—Andrew Restuccia, Natalie Andrews and Kate Davidson contributed to this article.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com
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