The top Democrats in Congress on Wednesday endorsed a $908 billion compromise stimulus plan proposed by a bipartisan group of moderate senators, calling on Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, to revive negotiations using the framework as the baseline.
The move was a significant concession by Democratic leaders who have pressed for a federal aid package of more than twice the size, but it offered no guarantee of a swift deal with Mr. McConnell, who has previously ruled out a measure anywhere near its scale.
President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. offered a blessing of sorts for the effort in a virtual event with laid-off workers and a small-business owner struggling in the coronavirus pandemic. Mr. Biden said the bipartisan package “wouldn’t be the answer, but it would be immediate help for a lot of things, quickly.”
Later, he said he had been “urging our congressional Republicans to work on a bipartisan emergency package now,” though he stressed that such a package, “at best, is only going to be a down payment.”
In a statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said that while they had privately made their own offer to Republicans on Monday evening, they believed the $908 billion framework “should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations.”
“Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate, and we believe that with good-faith negotiations we could come to an agreement,” the two leaders said.
They have long held out for at least $2 trillion in new funding for coronavirus relief, even amid mounting pressure from rank-and-file lawmakers eager for a deal. In their statement on Wednesday, the leaders cited the need for additional money to support distribution of a vaccine in the coming weeks as one reason they were willing to drop those demands and use the compromise plan to resume talks.
Intended as a stopgap measure to last until March, the framework was compiled by a bipartisan group including Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, Mitt Romney of Utah and Mark Warner of Virginia in a flurry of conversations over the Thanksgiving holiday. It would revive lapsed federal unemployment benefits at $300 a week, provide $288 billion for small businesses and $160 billion for state and local governments; it would also create a liability shield for businesses operating during the pandemic.
Mr. McConnell quickly threw cold water on that plan on Tuesday, instead circulating a scaled-back proposal that would repurpose unspent…
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