I spoke to Jonathan Nicholson of MarketWatch about the prospects for a Congressional Covid response deal before the election.
“Both sides appear perfectly content to head into the election thinking that the politics hurts the other side worse. Realistically, the best hope going forward is that a handful of these consensus provisions might be cherry-picked and incorporated into a clean-ish CR,” wrote Liam Donovan, principal at Bracewell LLP’s Policy Resolution Group ina note to clients.
But Donovan said in email the odds remain low, “maybe 25%.”
On the other hand, another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, reviving the federal add-on to state unemployment benefits, and bringing back the Paycheck Protection Program, which has $134 billion in unused lending authority, all have bipartisan support among Congress’ rank-and-file members.
“If you can’t figure out how to turn PPP back on with $100 billion just sitting there and bipartisan consensus, they have a lot of soul searching to do!” Donovan said.
Read the full piece here.