A
Coronavirus relief package doesn't sound like it's any closer to receiving a stamp of approval from
Congress after both
Democrats and
Republicans criticized — for different reasons — the latest $1.8 trillion proposal from the White House.
House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said the Trump administration's offer, which comes just a few days after
President Trump briefly called for a halt to negotiations, "amounted to one step forward and two steps back." The speaker, whose latest public offer was about $2.2 trillion, explained that the major divides between Democrats and the
White House were over an apparent lack of national coronavirus containment strategy and inadequate funding for child care and supplemental insurance benefits.
Republicans, meanwhile, told Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that Trump's bill was too big during a Saturday conference call. Per Politico, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said "there's no appetite to spend" what either the White House or Pelosi have put on the table, while some of his colleagues including Sen. John Borrasso (R-Wyo.) and fellow Tennessean Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) suggested passing legislation that costly would lead to an unhappy outcome for the GOP at the ballot box this November. Read more at Politico.