Democrats on Capitol Hill could have agreed to the COVID relief bill months ago that was finally hammered out Sunday, but they wanted to hurt President Donald Trump's reelection chances, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday.
"The facts are not irrelevant," McConnell said in an appearance on Fox News' "The Daily Briefing."
"I said back in July what the country needed was a package roughly of a trillion dollars focused on kids in school, small businesses, healthcare providers, and direct cash payments," McConnell said, adding Republicans started advocating for that in July and August.
"The talks were unproductive, so I essentially put that bill on the floor of the Senate in both September and October," he said. "Not a single Democrat supported it. Their view was, give us everything we want, or we won't give you anything."
"It's noteworthy that at the end they finally gave us what we could have agreed to back in July," he said. "I think what held it up was they did not want to do anything before the presidential election. I think they felt that would disadvantage [Biden]."
McConnell's words come in response to claims by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other Democrats that Republicans were the reason talks on the second round of COVID-19 relief had taken until the final hours.
Pelosi said multiple times she would not support anything less that $2 trillion, but relented after Biden's victory. She backed the roughly $900 billion package, saying the "new president" was the reason.
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