Pelosi Hopes Market Rout Pushes Trump Into a Covid-19 Stimulus Deal

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s still possible to get a deal on fiscal stimulus with the Trump administration after the election, but before the start of the new congressional and White House terms in January.

“Well I think so,” Pelosi said in a Bloomberg Television interview Thursday when asked if an agreement on Covid-19 relief could be reached in the so-called lame-duck session of Congress. “I hoped we could at least have an agreement before the election, but they have not ever responded.”

The speaker earlier Thursday listed seven major areas of disagreement in a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin regarding issues on which Democrats are awaiting responses from the administration.

“We don’t expect them all to be in our favor” when the White House does respond, Pelosi said in the interview.

President Donald Trump, meantime, repeated his accusation that Pelosi is stalling before the election. His top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, said on Fox News, “Our team now believes that the speaker has no intention of compromising on key issues.”

The seven areas Pelosi listed in her letter are a national virus testing-and-tracing program; funding for state and local governments; school safety measures; child-care funding; tax credits for working families; unemployment insurance; and workplace protections and liability issues.

Pelosi also said that a strong bounce-back in U.S. growth in the third quarter, reported Thursday, showcased the impact of a stimulus package approved in March. “That’s going to wear off, and we need another infusion,” she said in the interview.

Kudlow had a different take, saying that the 32% annualized jump in gross domestic product -- after a 33.1% drop in the April-through-June quarter -- showed a v-shaped recovery that wasn’t dependent on another giant stimulus package.

Even so, Trump reiterated his own call for a bill even bigger than the $2.4 trillion favored by the speaker. “But Nancy Pelosi does not want to do it,” he said in a podcast with Jon Taffer. Trump said he’ll push for “a very big package as soon as the election’s over.”

Trump’s push has long been rebuffed by many Senate Republicans, however, who have preferred more targeted assistance.

When asked if Democrats would accept a smaller relief bill in the lame-duck session, Pelosi said at a press briefing earlier that “we’re not talking size, we’re talking quality.” She said Democrats wouldn’t accept a small bill with “the bulk of it pouring onto the rich people of America.”

With the Dow Jones Industrial Average down roughly 1,900 points the past few sessions, the market is responding to the renewed spread of the coronavirus, without Washington having injected the resources necessary to deal with it, Pelosi said.

Stocks recouped some of their losses from the past three sessions on Thursday, with the Dow up 0.5% and the S&P 500 Index gaining 1.2% as of 1:39 p.m.

Pelosi also said that she expects Joe Biden to win the presidency next week, and there should be an initiative to craft a broad economic recovery plan in the run-up to his taking office, just as Democrats did after Barack Obama’s November 2008 victory.

“We will have to do something like that from the start,” Pelosi said in the interview.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

QUICKTAKE ON SOCIAL:

Follow QuickTake on Twitter: twitter.com/quicktake

Like QuickTake on Facebook: facebook.com/quicktake

Follow QuickTake on Instagram: instagram.com/quicktake

Subscribe to our newsletter

Email us at quicktakenews@gmail.com

QuickTake by Bloomberg is a global news network delivering up-to-the-minute analysis on the biggest news, trends and ideas for a new generation of leaders.