After more than 3 hours of talks Thursday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) failed to make an agreement about an economic package to help victims of the coronavirus shut down. On Monday, President Trump threatened to act on his own if no bipartisan deal could be reached and could move as soon as Friday or Saturday to sign executive orders to forestall evictions, suspend payroll tax collection and provide unemployment aid and student loan relief.
During a press conference, Chuck Schumer stated that if President Trump issues the executive orders on the economy, the order “will leave most people out, will not cover the broad expanse of what’s needed, will be litigated in court, and be awkward and difficult to implement,” Breitbart reports.
Schumer said, “I would say, right now, the president only has two choices: The first is to negotiate with Democrats. He knows Republicans can’t pass a bill, and you probably can’t even a majority of Republican senators to vote for any bill, let alone the House. So, the — one choice, the best choice, is to continue negotiating with us and realize he has to meet a compromise in the middle. It can’t be all his way or 95 or 90 percent his way. The second choice is to try these executive orders, which will leave most people out, will not cover the broad expanse of what’s needed, will be litigated in court, and be awkward and difficult to implement. It’s not a good choice at all.”