White House $1.8T stimulus offer faces opposition

Senate Republicans and Democrats remain unable to come to a consensus over a new stimulus package. Yahoo Finance’s Jess Smith joins The Final Round panel to discuss the latest happenings down in Washington D.C.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Let's get to the latest on the stimulus talks. We have President Trump tweeting about it once again this morning, but it now seems that the White House at least seems to be changing its course just a little bit as talks stall once again. Jess Smith has been tracking the latest on these negotiations for us, and, Jess, we know the White House put forth a $1.8 trillion proposal last week. Democrats pushing back on that. Where do things stand now?

JESS SMITH: Well that latest proposal from the White House really rejected by both sides over the weekend. Speaker Pelosi and the chairs of various House committees put out statements over the weekend blasting that $1.8 trillion proposal. In two different letters to her Democratic colleagues, Pelosi outlined the differences that still remain between the two sides. She said that there are still differences when it comes to state and local funding, unemployment insurance, worker protections, child care, among many other issues. In one of the letters she said of the administration, "It is hard to understand who is shaping their approach, which to date has been a miserable and deadly failure. Until these serious issues are resolved, we remain at an impasse."

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans are also blasting this plan. According to the "Washington Post," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had a call with Senate Republicans, and many of them just kind of railed on this plan, saying that it is just too much money. Now Meadows and Mnuchin did write a letter to Congress yesterday saying that since there isn't an agreement here, Congress should act to allow the administration to use some of the unspent money from the Paycheck Protection Program. They said this all-or-nothing approach is unacceptable.

But Speaker Pelosi has repeatedly said she does not want to do this piece by piece. The House Majority Leader did put out the schedule for this week, saying no votes are scheduled as negotiators fail to come to an agreement. They could always get called back to Washington, but at this point things don't look promising, Seana.

SEANA SMITH: They certainly don't, Jess. And it's interesting as we've seen, investors able to shrug off the fact that we still don't have a deal, with the Dow up over 300 points. And, of course, we have President Trump tweeting once again, not only about the stimulus talks, but really the stock market's performance recently. And we know he loves to do that because he loves to kind of I guess compare it or take credit, I guess I should say, for its recent performance.

So, he tweeted this morning, "Remember the stock market at an all-time high and going up." He also tweeted that 401Ks are at a record. And then of course he turned that forward to the election, so he's trying to take the attention off the fact that we don't have a stimulus deal and basically saying that with Joe Biden comes tax increases, comes job losses, and a depression like we've never seen before. So President Trump trying to switch a narrative once again away from the fact that we don't have a deal, and, of course, just taking credit for some of the gains that we're seeing in the broader market.