# ‘It’s about midnight’ for stimulus deal, key GOP senator says
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‘It’s about midnight’ for stimulus deal, key GOP senator says
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Pelosi talked to Mnuchin for almost an hour but they still disagree over testing strategy
Sen. Richard Shelby, R.-Ala., speaks to a reporter as he departs from the U.S. Capitol Friday. (Photo by Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
Whatever embers of hope remained for a last minute pre-election deal on a coronavirus stimulus package from Capitol Hill cooled Monday as senators planned their departure from Washington.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury Secretary talked for almost an hour Monday, her office said, but differences remained over coronavirus testing language Democrats have sought.
Despite the lack of an agreement, Hammill tweeted, “The Speaker remains optimistic that an agreement can be reached before the election.”
That outlook was not widely shared on Capitol Hill.
“I think it’s about midnight,” Sen. Richard Shelby, the Alabama Republican who heads the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, told reporters.
Shelby’s panel would be involved in almost any version of a stimulus package that Pelosi and Mnuchin have been trying to negotiate for weeks now.
The Senate was prepared to take a vote on the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to become an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court early Monday night. That will likely be the last floor vote before the election, clearing senators up for re-election to hit the campaign trail for the final week. House members have been gone since early October.
The Senate is slated to return to session Nov. 9, the week after the election, while House members are not due back until Nov. 16. When they return, they face a deadline of Dec. 11 to reach agreement on another stopgap funding bill to keep the government open.
Whether the odds for a stimulus bill improve in the lame duck session is unclear.
“My sense is that when you get past kind of the hot rhetoric of the moment, that most people believe that even though we can’t do everything, we ought to do something,” said Sen. John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, on Sunday.
Shelby said he had talked to Mnuchin and his counterpart on the House side, House Appropriations Chairman Nita Lowey, last week. He said did not know if the political dynamics would shift in the lame duck to favor a deal.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
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