A4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, AUGUST 2 , 2020
BY ERICA WERNER
AND RACHAEL BADENegotiations between top
White House officials and con-
gressional Democrats on corona-
virus relief legislation showed
signs of progress on Saturday, af-
ter days of stalemate that caused
30 million Americans to lose
emergency unemployment ben-
efits.
Emerging from a three-hour
meeting with Tr easury Secretary
Steven Mnuchin and White House
Chief of Staff Mark Meadows,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-
Calif.) a nd Senate Minority Leader
Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said
they’d had their most productive
discussion to date, although they
had n ot yet struck a d eal.
“It was the best discussion
we’ve had so far, and I’d call it
progress, but [there’s] a ways to
go,” Schumer said. He said aides
would be meeting Sunday to go
over details, and the principals
would meet a gain Monday.
Mnuchin and Meadows agreed
as they addressed reporters at the
Capitol a s hort time l ater.
“It’s time to make a deal,” Mead-
ows said. “A nd if we’re going to be
able to succeed in this, it’s taking
what started as probably the first
day of a good foundation, produc-
tive discussions, and building
upon those until we reach an
agreement hopefully in the next
couple of days.”
Meadows added: “There are
still substantial differences, but
we did make good progress.”
It was a striking change of tone
from Friday, when Meadows and
Pelosi exchanged harsh public
criticism about who was to blame
for the expiration of $600 weekly
enhanced unemployment ben-
efits at a time of great economic
uncertainty.
Those b enefits, which Congress
approved in March, expired Fri-
day. White House officials have
been trying to get Democrats to
agree to a short-term fix that
would extend the unemployment
benefits and address a handful of
other items such as continuing amoratorium on e victions that also
recently expired.
Democrats, whose starting
point is a $3 trillion bill the House
passed in May, have been holding
out for a more comprehensive re-
sponse that would address the
many economic and health-care
needs besetting t he nation.
Mnuchin said Saturday that
even as the two sides were finding
areas of agreement on policy,
there was still disagreement on
the best way to move forward leg-
islatively.
“They’ve made c lear that there’s
a desire on their part to do an
entire package; we’ve made clear
that we are willing to deal with the
short-term issues, p ass something
quickly, and come back to the l arg-
er issues,” Mnuchin said. “So we’re
at a n impasse on that.”
Nevertheless, the positive com-
ments a fter t he meeting suggested
that the two sides might finally be
heading toward a deal, after four
straight d ays of meetings this p ast
week produced nothing b ut angry
rhetoric.Recent polling has shown vot-
ers are increasingly disgusted
with Congress, which has not act-
ed since spring even as the c orona-
virus pandemic has been growing
worse and the economic recovery
has stalled. More than 151 ,00 0
Americans have died of covid-19,
the disease caused by the virus, as
of Saturday.
“Millions are on the verge of
eviction. People need resources in
order to meet the needs of their
families,” Pelosi said. “This is not a
usual discussion, because the ur-
gency is so great.”
Mnuchin said the two sides
agreed on the need to extend un-
employment insurance and the
eviction moratorium and provide
money f or schools and small busi-
nesses. Vast differences remain,
though, including Senate Majority
Leader Mitch McConnell’s de-
mand for a l iability shield for busi-
nesses, health-care providers and
others, and Democrats’ demand
for $1 trillion in additional aid to
cities and s tates.
McConnell (R-Ky.) was home inKentucky on Saturday and did not
participate in the negotiations,
which he’s largely left to adminis-
tration o fficials. B ut Meadows a nd
Mnuchin said they were keeping
him and President Trump closely
apprised of developments.
Senate Republican leaders
waited until July 27 to release a
$1 trillion bill as a response to the
Democrats’ plan, but it immedi-
ately encountered resistance from
within the Senate GOP confer-
ence. The White House quickly
abandoned it and began pushing
for s ome kind of short-term f ix for
the u nemployment benefits.
Republicans have floated a few
plans for extending the enhanced
unemployment benefits, which
come on top of whatever states
already offer. Republicans say the
$600 weekly payment is so gener-
ous it provides a disincentive for
people to return to work, though
Democrats disagree. One ap-
proach that’s attracted GOP sup-
port would reduce the benefit to
$20 0 weekly, or a formula that
would replace around two-thirdsof a worker’s wages before losing
their j ob.
Democrats insist any such ap-
proach is insufficient for the need
in the c ountry and the f ragile state
of the economy, which could suffer
overall from the evaporation of
the b enefits t hat have h elped new-
ly unemployed workers pay rent
and buy groceries.
Tr ump introduced another
wrinkle Saturday by renewing his
call for a payroll tax cut, a policy
already r ejected by S enate Repub-
licans, who left it out of the coro-
navirus relief bill they released on
Monday.
“Payroll Tax Cut plus Dollars!”
Tr ump tweeted. The mention of
“dollars” apparently referred to
stimulus checks to individual
Americans, which are supported
by members of both parties and
are expected to be i ncluded i n any
final deal. But despite the presi-
dent’s renewed advocacy, there is
little appetite on Capitol Hill for a
payroll tax cut.
[email protected]
[email protected]White House o∞cials, Democrats make progress in talks on relief package
After a
springtime
boomlet of
bipartisan
legislation, Congress has slid
back into its familiar posture of
hitting gridlock on everything
from combating police violence
to determining which statues
should remain in the Capitol.
And, over the past two weeks,
the heated negotiations over the
next coronavirus relief package
have stalled as President
Trump’s advisers and House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
have openly feuded after each of
their private huddles.
The public took notice.
Over the past two months
congressional approval ratings
have crashed downward, after a
sudden previous bump in
approval. Fewer than 1 in 5
voters say they like what
lawmakers are doing on Capitol
Hill, according to the Gallup
Poll, which is the most
consistent tracker of voter
attitudes toward Congress.
This five-month arc
demonstrates that it doesn’t
take a PhD in political science
to figure out public attitudes
toward the legislative body.
When lawmakers are delivering
results, even after some messy
fights, voters warm up to
Congress.
When the partisan disputes
run into legislative deadlock,
Americans recoil.
Pelosi defended the current
standoff over the latest
pandemic response as a
legitimate clash of ideas over
how to keep Americans safe and
how to safely restart the
economy, a logjam given the
weight of the matters at hand.
“Why can’t they come to an
agreement? We don’t have
shared values. That’s just the
way it is. So it’s not bickering.
It’s standing our ground. We’re
trying to find common ground,”
Pelosi told reporters Friday.
The next few weeks could
determine whether Americans
give Congress a second chance
over its handling of the health
and economic crises.
In early May, 31 percent of
Americans approved of the job
that the House and Senate were
doing, the second straight
month that Gallup recorded
congressional job approval
cresting 30 percent.
Those marked the first times
since 2009 when at least 3 in 10
Americans approved of
congressional job performance,
a decade-long run of futility that
fell well outside of historical
norms.
Granted, 30 percent approval
ratings are nothing to write
home about, but it’s a lot better
than the 18 percent of
Americans who approved of
Congress in Gallup’s poll from
late July.
From the fall of 2009 until
this April, Gallup conducted 125
polls on Congress, and only six
times did at least 25 percent of
Americans approve of what was
happening under the Capitol
dome.
What changed this spring?
Faced with matters of life and
death, Congress got its act
together and poured money into
fighting the crisis.
That funding was r elevant to
people’s daily lives and also won
approval with overwhelming
support from Democrats and
Republicans.
It began March 5 with what
seemed like a big bang:
$8.3 billion directed toward the
Department of Health and
Human Services to help develop
a vaccine and build out thesupply of testing kits for the
novel coronavirus.
The House approved the
initial bill on a 415-to-2 vote,
while the Senate had just one
dissenting vote.
Trump advisers and
congressional leaders, realizing
how quickly the virus was
upending life, turned to a
“phase two” package that
included unemployment
benefits, encouraging paid sick
leave and other modest
proposals. Nine days after the
first bill passed, the House
voted 35 3-to- 40 to approve that
package, which by March 18 had
90 votes in the Senate for its
approval.
By then most of the nation
had been virtually shut down,
from schools to businesses, as
the virus brought life to a halt,
and by March 27 both chambers
had approved the Cares Act.
Worth more than $2 trillion,that legislation served as the
financial equivalent of the
Berlin airlift — pouring tens of
billions of dollars here and
there into hospital funds, a new
$600 weekly stipend to
augment state unemployment
benefits, a stabilization fund for
industries that had been all but
shuttered.
Out of whole cloth,
lawmakers created the Paycheck
Protection Program, designed to
give small businesses grants if
they kept workers on their
payroll.
And it was done with
overwhelming support, not even
a formally recorded vote in the
House and a unanimous roll call
in the Senate. Lawmakers
patted themselves on the back
after having spent the fall and
winter battling over the
Democratic effort to impeach
Trump.
“The Senate has pivoted fromone of the most contentious
partisan periods in the nation’s
history to passing this rescue
package 100 to nothing,” Senate
Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) told
reporters after the Cares Act
passed.
A March 30 Gallup poll
showed 77 percent of Americans
approved of the massive
infusion of relief money, and by
mid-April the PPP program had
run dry, so Congress passed a
$484 billion package to
replenish that and provided
targeted small business relief,
again passing the Senate
without a recorded vote and
only a handful of opposition
votes in the House.
Over seven weeks lawmakers
came together to pass four
major pieces of legislation,
approaching a $3 trillion price
tag, with heated debates but,
ultimately, sweeping bipartisan
approval.
Sure, like the airlift of the late
1940 s, some PPP grants ended
up in the accounts of
corporations less deserving
than the family-run pizza place,
but even conservative estimates
suggest it might have saved
more than 13 million jobs.
For the first time in years, the
public saw Congress not just
debating and arguing about a
crisis, but actually coming
together and passing important
relief that connects with their
everyday lives.
What happened this summer?
Those debates and arguments
returned to gridlock.
Two weeks after George Floyd
died at the hands of
Minneapolis police, Democrats
introduced legislation designed
to combat police brutality and
make it easier for law
enforcement to face criminaland civil punishment.
Soon after Republicans
offered their bill, and for a few
days in June, both parties talked
about reaching a broad
compromise on an issue that
had galvanized the nation and
led to mass protests, shifting
public opinion in ways that
pollsters rarely see.
That optimism quickly faded.
The House, run by
Democrats, approved its more
expansive legislation while the
Senate, run by Republicans,
ended debate after Democrats
filibustered the GOP proposal.
The issue has left center stage
in the Capitol, and no one
expects it to return to the
agenda.
In the Gallup poll, Democrats
suffered the largest drop in
approval, from 39 percent in
May to 20 percent in late July.
T hat fruitless debate led into
another bitterly partisan
showdown over a fifth
pandemic crisis legislative
package that pushed passed
Friday’s deadline — which
means the enhanced
unemployment benefits have
expired and a moratorium on
evictions has lapsed.
Some Republicans have
questioned whether Washington
needs to send out more money
as real-life consequences have
run into congressional
intransigence, sending its
approval right back into the
gutter.
Pelosi held out hope that the
process, while ugly, could still
produce a final product that
would win passage. It’s unclear
whether the public will be as
supportive this time.
“So we anticipate that we will
have a bill, but we’re not there
yet,” she said.
[email protected]Approval of Congress plummets as gridlock on virus relief grinds on
@PKCapitol
PAUL KANE
MANUEL BALCE CENETA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) elbow-bumps Senate
Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at the Capitol. The
speaker says she is optimistic that another relief package will come
together.to downplay the threat and j ustify
inaction — d isregarding warnings
from the intelligence community
and Joe Biden not to take their
word.”
T rump h as two main o ptions to
limit the app in the United States.
One relies on a 2019 executive
order, t he International Economic
Emergency Powers Act, which ef-
fectively bans any communica-
tions tool t hat is deemed a nation-
al security threat. Under the full
force of that order, app stores in
the United States wouldn’t b e able
to list TikTok and Americans
couldn’t w ork for t he company.
T he other would be through a
process led by the Committee on
Foreign Investment in the United
States, an interagency body that
recommends to the president
whether certain proposed take-
overs should be rejected, and
whether completed takeovers
should be reversed, on national
security grounds. The committee
began investigating an acquisi-
tion by ByteDance after lawmak-
ers asked the government to step
in o ver national security concerns.
While this is fairly rare, Tr ump
used it as recently as March, when
the president ordered a Chinese
company to sell its stake in a U. S.
hotel-software company. Last
year, the Tr ump administration
used it to demand the Chinese
owners of gay dating app Grindr
give u p control of the c ompany.
[email protected]
[email protected]Rachel Lerman reported from Seattle.
Elizabeth Dwoskin in San Francisco
and Ellen Nakashima in Washington
contributed to this report.more scrutiny this week among
Senate Republicans, who also
have deployed tough anti-China
rhetoric in their policies on Capi-
tol Hill and during their reelection
campaigns.
On Tuesday, a g roup of Republi-
can senators — including Sens.
Tom Cotton (Ark.), Kevin Cramer
(N.D.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Joni Ernst
(Iowa), Marco Rubio (Fla.), Rick
Scott (Fla.) and Thom Tillis (N.C.)
wrote to top administration offi-
cials questioning whether TikTok
could be weaponized by the Chi-
nese g overnment t o interfere w ith
the 2020 e lections.
Speaking with reporters on a
separate trip to Florida last
month, Tr ump said the United
States’ relationship with China
had been “severely damaged” be-
cause of the coronavirus and he
was no longer thinking about a
potential second trade deal with
China.
Meanwhile, the Tr ump cam-
paign has continued to mock pre-
sumptive Democratic presiden-
tial n ominee Joe Biden a s “Beijing
Biden” t o try to portray t he f ormer
vice president as weak on China.
But polling conducted amid the
pandemic has generally shown
that the public favors Biden on
China relations — even after a
torrent of anti-China ads from the
Tr ump campaign against the
Democrat e arlier this year.
“Donald Tr ump has been the
weakest president in American
history with respect to China,”
said Biden campaign spokesman
Andrew B ates. “As the most devas-
tating public health crisis in 100
years rapidly spread, he echoed
Chinese government propagandaFervent TikTok fans took to the
app Saturday as they feared a
shutdown, some to beg followers
to find them on other social media
sites, others to encourage users to
get VPNs to make it seem they
were accessing TikTok from an-
other country. Others made vid-
eos trying to calm everyone’s
nerves, insisting there w as no way
the app would permanently shut
down.
Many of the so-called TikTok
Teens h ave already w aged a digital
vendetta aimed at Trump, using
their Internet know-how to try to
make it seem like merchandise is
sold out on his site and flooding
his campaign app with bad re-
views in the App Store. But their
most high-profile stunt may have
rankled the president even more:
A big coalition of young users
hatched a p lan to reserve tickets to
his June Tulsa rally that they never
planned to use, aiming to disap-
point the campaign.
Attendance to the Tulsa rally
was lower than expected, for
which teens and K-pop fans im-
mediately claimed credit. But the
Tr ump campaign said it verified
expected attendees, and those
tickets were not reserved.
TikTok has also been an outlet
for videos created by the comedi-
an Sarah Cooper, who has used the
platform — as well as Twitter — to
post short clips mocking t he presi-
dent that have gone widely viral.
Her most recent was lip-synced to
the audio of Tr ump speaking Fri-
day to reporters: “We’re looking at
TikTok. We may be banning Tik-
Tok. We may be doing some other
things.”
T ikTok had come under evenDance to sell off the U. S. portion of
TikTok over national security c on-
cerns, but Trump later empha-
sized to reporters traveling with
him that he did n ot support a deal
to let a U. S. company buy TikTok’s
U. S. operations.
Microsoft is still the leading
contender to purchase TikTok if a
deal goes through, according to
people familiar with the talks,
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to discuss private de-
liberations.
ByteDance and Microsoft were
close to a deal, and it could be
finalized as soon as this weekend,
according to one i ndividual, but it
was unclear whether Tr ump’s late
Friday comments or other factors
might change that.
ByteDance would still prefer
not to sell if it’s an option to keep
operating in the United States, the
individual said.
TikTok’s representatives were
still waging a public-relations
campaign to appeal to govern-
ment officials this weekend. Hi-
lary McQuaide, a spokesperson
for the company, issued a state-
ment emphasizing that it stores
data in the United States and has
hired nearly 1,0 00 U. S. employees
so far this year. TikTok has 1,
U. S. employees and has been ex-
panding that number rapidly.
A nd the general manager for
TikTok in the United States posted
a video to the app thanking A meri-
can users.
“ We're not planning on going
anywhere,” Vanessa Pappas said,
pledging to bring 10,000 more
U. S. jobs in the n ext few years. “We
appreciate the support. We’re here
for the l ong run.”tion by Tr ump against China as
the United States continues to reel
from the pandemic and approval
of his handling of the public
health crisis remains underwater,
threatening his reelection pros-
pects.
Tr ump is also picking a high-
profile fight with the fast-grow-
ing, short video sharing app that
has been downloaded more than 2
billion times and is increasingly
popular with young people, espe-
cially amid the pandemic as users
circulate viral videos — many
mocking the president himself.
“China has long been the Unit-
ed States’ greatest geopolitical foe
and a focus of derision in Rust B elt
states that were decimated by the
hollowing out of our manufactur-
ing base,” said Cliff Sims, a former
Tr ump White House aide. “Trump
capitalized o n this in 20 16.”
Sims c ontinued: “ Now unfavor-
able views toward China are at an
all-time high because of covid-19.
So when you combine the geopo-
litical realities with the domestic
politics, i t makes perfect sense f or
the president to continue ratchet-
ing up the rhetoric and making
moves to confront China head-
on.”
Aboard Air Force One return-
ing from Florida late Friday,
Tr ump said he planned to use
either emergency economic pow-
ers or an executive order to bar
TikTok from operating domesti-
cally.
“As far as TikTok is concerned,
we’re banning them from the
United S tates,” he told reporters.
Earlier in the day, t he president
had been considering an order
that would force China’s Byte-BY SEUNG MIN KIM
AND RACHEL LERMANPresident Trump’s p romise t his
week to bar the popular, Chinese-
owned TikTok from operating in
the United States is the latest
move in his increasingly hostile
posture toward Beijing that
echoes a broader, anti-China
stance within the Republican Par-
ty ahead of the November elec-
tions.
In e ssentially every reference t o
the novel coronavirus and the dis-
ease i t causes, c ovid-19, Tr ump has
derided it as the “China virus,”
faulting the country for being un-
able to contain it as it spread
beyond its borders and led to
more than 17.6 million cases
worldwide. When he floated a po-
tential TikTok ban in a television
interview last month, Tr ump indi-
cated it was in retaliation for Chi-
na’s role in the p andemic.
U ntil this year, when the coro-
navirus pandemic caused d ramat-
ic numbers of infections and
deaths in the United States,
Tr ump had taken a much warmer
tone toward Beijing, repeatedly
touting his relationship with Chi-
nese President Xi Jinping and de-
clining to forcefully confront him
on human rights violations.
But the TikTok order — which
as of Saturday had not been made
public — marked another escala-
Trump’s vow to ban TikTok reflects a nti-China posture ahead of elections
Users mock the president
in the app, but senators
worry about security risk