Republicans face unemployment renewal 'time crunch of their own making'

Republicans have wrapped a week of coronavirus relief bill discussions seemingly no closer to an agreement.

The GOP has spent the week discussing the next CARES Act and the unemployment boost that expires at the end of the month, but haven't yet agreed with a party-wide approach to replace it. As Bloomberg's Steven Dennis writes, it's "a time crunch of their own making" that Democrats have had no problem calling out.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), usually careful to strategically time moves within the congressional calendar, announced Tuesday what appeared to be the party's unified agreement on what it wanted in the next coronavirus relief bill. It included another round of $1,200 stimulus payments, and no mention of the $600/week unemployment boost Americans had gotten since early in the pandemic. But a meeting of Senate GOP leaders and Trump administration officials signaled there wasn't much agreement between the Senate and Trump, or between the senators themselves. The disconnect is making McConnell's discussion delay look like "a significant miscalculation," Dennis writes.

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) criticized the Republicans' infighting on Friday. "We had expected to be working throughout this weekend to find common ground on the next COVID response package," they said. "It is simply unacceptable that Republicans have had this entire time to reach consensus among themselves and continue to flail."