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The Presidential Race is getting intense as President Trump expresses his desire to walk away from stimulus negotiations until after election day. This statement comes from Trump less than
48 hours after he returned to the White House. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a statement shortly after Trump’s statement mentioning a claim that the White House is in total chaos.
The 2020 coronavirus pandemic has forced the economy to come to a complete stop as businesses shut down for long periods of time. This situation has resulted in both political parties wanting to provide some much-needed relief to the public. A stimulus check has already been sent out for the pandemic once and President Trump did not rule out that possibility, especially if a separate bill was sent to his desk.
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It might be good news that the President has not ruled out a separate individual bill for stimulus checks. This is an unlikely scenario because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued to decline this offer.
A Separate Stimulus Bill – Is It Possible?
President Trump published a tweet just hours after he ordered to shut down negotiations for a new stimulus package until after the election. This recent tweet mentioned that he would immediately sign a bill that provided $1,200 stimulus checks to nearly every American. He ended this tweet with a message for the House Speaker, “Are You Listening Nancy?” The President had mentioned earlier in the day that he didn’t believe Nancy Pelosi was negotiating in good faith and she would rather sign a lopsided stimulus deal for her own political party’s benefit.
A separate stimulus bill might still be possible. It would really require a significant level of pressure to be placed on the democratic party leaders in congress. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are not going to act unless a lot more public pressure is placed on them. President Trump has placed the ball into their court with his tweet and it is not clear what is going to happen next. The last few months indicate that nothing will likely get done.
The Power of the Polls
You might think that the economic recovery day might play a large factor in a stimulus package getting signed. The truth is that the election polls might be an ever larger factor than the actual recovery data for the economy.
The party trailing in the polls will likely feel more pressure to sign a stimulus package to try and improve their political standing with the public. The interesting thing about this entire scenario is that the polls show President Trump slightly behind Joe Biden and he still feels confident enough to delay the stimulus package until after the election. This could indicate that the President’s internal polling data is much better than the public data that is currently available.
This is not a crazy assumption, especially with how far off the 2016 election polls were. President Trump ended up winning states like Michigan and Wisconsin after pre-election polls showed him down by as much as 10 points. This political calculation is very interesting and will continue to be monitored.
GOP Leaders Want a Smaller Stimulus Package
The GOP Leaders have expressed interest in smaller stimulus bills that are separate from the main package. They offered a maximum of 1.6 Trillion and Nancy Pelosi seemed to reject that offer and re-proposed 2.2 Trillion. The smaller stimulus package makes sense as the economic recovery continues to improve. People are getting back to work and the jobs numbers have been record-setting. With that being said, the stock market has also been closing near record highs every single day.
The democrats want a massive stimulus package with special additions that benefit their party and republicans seem to want a small stimulus package that limits unemployment benefits. Both parties are probably not where they need to be in terms of the correct policy but it certainly will be interesting to see what happens as election day approaches.
