"Real progress" has been made between Democrats and Republicans on a fifth coronavirus relief package, and while an impasse remains on state and local aid, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said Tuesday he expects Senate Republicans to either pass a bill or put out one to get to a 60-vote threshold sometime next week.
"They've been working around the clock," Meadows said on CNBC's "Squawk on the Street." "Each and every day we have a call to talk about where we can find consensus there."
However, the proposal won't be close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's $2 trillion benchmark, as it's "not based on facts and it's not based on the reality," said Meadows.
"It's real easy to put a number out there and say that this is reasonable," he said. "It's much more difficult to actually look at it and support it with actual numbers and so that's where the Senate proposal is looking at, a more targeted bill as they look at maybe a $500 billion bill, but if we can add from that and use that as a foundation or at least pass that."
If that happens, then negotiations can continue on further items that are separating the two sides, said Meadows.
Meanwhile, the biggest stumbling block that remains is "the amount of money that would go to state and local help," Meadows said.
Pelosi is still demanding $915 billion, but that is "just not a number that's based on reality," said Meadows.
The White House, represented by Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and congressional Democrats, led by Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., had been negotiating but their talks broke down when the could not agree on terms of the package. The Democrats' package calls for $3 billion in aid, while Republicans have called for a more scaled-down package.
Republicans have pushed for a "skinny" bill that would contain the parts that both sides support, but Democrats have refused that idea. Instead, they have proposed an agreement in which they would come down on their plans by $1 trillion if the White House would increase its side of the deal by $1 trillion, but that was rejected.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.