Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday rejected a $2 trillion offer from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Mnuchin told Fox News on Friday: “That’s a non-starter.” Both parties have imposed a Friday deadline to come up with a deal.
It came after Schumer said that Republicans “totally” rejected their proposal, arguing that they want to spend “as little as possible.”
“‘We’ll take down a trillion, if you add a trillion in.’ They said absolutely not,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) added in the news conference. “I will once again make the offer: We’ll come down a trillion, you go up a trillion, and then we’ll be within range of each other,” Pelosi added. “But again, this a very different set of values across the table.”
Schumer said that it’s not possible to make a deal with a package worth less than $2 trillion.
“The House doesn’t have the votes to go south of $2 trillion,” Schumer said. “Senate Democrats can’t go south of $2 trillion, so that’s what compromise is all about.”
A breakdown in the talks would put at risk more than $100 billion to help reopen schools, a fresh round of $1,200 direct payments to most people, and hundreds of billions of dollars for state and local governments to help them avoid furloughing workers and cutting services as tax revenues shrivel.
Meanwhile, a Labor Department report showed that the United States added 1.8 million jobs last month, a much lower increase than in May and June.
The White House is also promising that President Donald Trump will attempt to use executive orders to address elements of the congressional package involving evictions and jobless benefits.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
