McConnell Insists on an End to Expanded Unemployment Benefits in Next Coronavirus Bill

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said today that expanded unemployment benefits passed as part of March’s $2.2 trillion Coronavirus relief bill will not be included in the next package passed by Congress. 

In a call with House Republicans, McConnell stood by the GOP’s decision to “pause” before passing a “phase four” bill, and indicated that the holding pattern would continue for the immediate future as they assess the impact of previous Coronavirus bills. 

He blasted House Democrats earlier in the day saying that the Senate has been working all month while the House has been “crickets.” He continued that “the lights are off and the doors are locked.”

McConnell told House GOPers, if Congress passed another bill, technically the fifth piece of coronavirus legislation, Republicans would “clean up the Democrats’ crazy policy that is paying people more to remain unemployed than they would earn if they went back to work.”

A strong opponent to the original provision, Senator Lindsey Graham, asked President Trump during a closed-door caucus lunch yesterday to agree not to extend the beefed up unemployment benefits.

Graham to the president: “I asked him not to agree to that. That we can’t. You can extend some assistance, but you don’t want to pay people more unemployed than they made working.”

“He didn’t say he wasn’t going to sign a bill with it in, but he agreed that that was a problem we need to look at,” Graham said and that although the president “agrees that that is hurting the economic recovery” he didn’t make a commitment.