WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 15th December, 2020) US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has invited fellow congressional leaders to a meeting on Tuesday to try and strike a deal to fund the government and send out another round of COVID-19 relief, CNBC reported.
"The meeting would mark the most significant effort yet for the four leaders to come to a bipartisan agreement on a package that could get through a divided Congress," the report said. "It is unclear now whether all of the congressional leaders will agree to talk Tuesday."
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, have been asked to attend the meeting as Congress was running out of time to avoid a government shutdown and send another round of aid to the US public, the report said.
In March, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act dispensing $3 trillion as paycheck protection for workers, loans and grants for businesses and other personal aid for qualifying citizens and residents.
In the past few months, however, Democrats and Republicans were locked in a bitter disagreement about a successive relief plan to the CARES Act. The stalemate appeared broken last week after a bipartisan group of Democrats and Republicans proposed a $908 billion relief bill, which led the two sides to resume negotiations.
On Monday, the bipartisan group proposed to split that $908 billion package into two: a $748 billion bill with new unemployment benefits, small business aid and other programs that have received broad support from both sides, and a second $160 billion bill of highly-contested liability protections for firms and aid state and local governments. The second bill could end up falling out of the deal if the first goes through.
