House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has given the White House a 48-hour deadline to reach an agreement on passing a coronavirus stimulus relief bill before the Nov. 3 election.
“The 48 only relates to if we want to get it done before the election, which we do,” Pelosi said in an interview on ABC’s This Week. “But we’re saying to them we have to freeze the design on some of these things. Are we going with it or not? And what is the language?”
Read More: Pelosi dismisses latest White House stimulus offer as ‘one step forward, two steps back’
Pelosi’s talks with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin over a deal costing between $1.8 trillion and $2.2 trillion have been dragging on for months without any results. With the window for action quickly narrowing, Pelosi gave the White House a deadline that indicated if no agreement could be reached by Tuesday, it would not be possible to reach a new relief bill by the election.
Pelosi’s office explained to CNN Sunday that the 48 hours refers to the end of the day on Tuesday and that they need answers to key questions by then or they won’t be able to get a bill passed before Nov. 3. Negotiations would still continue after Tuesday if a deal isn’t reached, but it wouldn’t get done before the election.
According to the Washington Post, Pelosi has not spoken with President Donald Trump in over a year, but reiterated Sunday that she’s negotiating through his emissaries and there’s little point in talking directly with the president because he’s not truthful.
Read More: Pelosi: New COVID-19 relief package coming soon
“You want to meet with him, you meet with him,” she told host George Stephanopoulos. “As far as I’m concerned, the speaker of the House must be respected in terms of what the purpose of the meeting is, what the preparation is for and what the likelihood of success would be.”
With surging unemployment numbers, small business closures and the termination of direct payments and enhanced unemployment insurance that helped to keep families and individuals afloat throughout the pandemic, the pressure to strike a deal has become increasingly urgent.
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