--- title: Washington Grinds To a Halt on Pandemic Relief description: Lawmakers are locked in bitter negotiations over what comes next to help struggling Americans staring down a pandemic. canonical: https://time.com/5876998/washington-stuck-pandemic-aid/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2020-08-06T18:03:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T09:05:43.907Z article:section: Politics og:title: Washington Grinds To a Halt on Pandemic Relief og:description: Lawmakers are locked in bitter negotiations over what comes next to help struggling Americans staring down a pandemic. og:url: https://time.com/5876998/washington-stuck-pandemic-aid/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8074681f4f9cde7d/698a111f16d8840947c387e7/Mark-Meadows.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: DC Brief Aug 6 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Washington Grinds To a Halt on Pandemic Relief twitter:description: Lawmakers are locked in bitter negotiations over what comes next to help struggling Americans staring down a pandemic. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8074681f4f9cde7d/698a111f16d8840947c387e7/Mark-Meadows.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Washington Grinds To a Halt, Leaving Americans’ Mounting Problems Unsolved > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=ccd47ca8-37a5-42f7-89f7-056ba2dbb76f&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1)  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Aug 6, 2020 6:03 PM UTC  Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows prepares to talk with reporters following a meeting with Speaker of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin at the Capitol in Washington on Aug. 5, 2020. Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows prepares to talk with reporters following a meeting with Speaker of the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin at the Capitol in Washington on Aug. 5, 2020. Rod Lamkey—CNP/Sipa  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Aug 6, 2020 6:03 PM UTC There are times when everyone in Washington puts their best face forward and projects optimism. As [unemployment](https://time.com/5875528/swing-voters-covid-relief/) insurance drops out from under millions of Americans, [evictions](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/business/evictions-moratorium-cares-act.html) are no longer banned and even post offices have become an endangered [species](https://time.com/5875215/house-us-postal-service-delays/), this is not one of them. Lawmakers are locked in bitter and increasingly personal negotiations over what comes next to help struggling Americans staring down a pandemic. No solution is in sight. A federal supplement to unemployment insurance expired a week ago, as did a ban on kicking renters out of homes they can’t afford at the moment. The postal service — soon to be the chief elections administrator amid the coronavirus pandemic — is a new battleground for lawmakers who are about to head into full-time reelection [mode](https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/04/coronavirus-relief-senate-recess-391463) with their deliberate inaction looming in the background. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) The August recess is poised to start, when America’s elected officials will go home to ready the fall campaign season with face masks as the new yard signs. The optics of going home as health, economic and racial crises are entering a sixth month is the equivalent of pouring a bucket of iced water on a cardboard cutout of Lady Liberty. Put simply: anyone [telling](https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/26/surprisingly-few-voters-think-trump-cares-about-people-like-me/) you Washington cares about people like you is fibbing. To be fair, lawmakers are [exhausted](https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/08/06/congress-coronavirus-stimulus-trump/?hpid=hp%5Fhp-banner-main%5Fbailouthill-910am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans). Senators on the ballot this fall have told McConnell to park colleagues in Washington so he can save his grip on the gavel beyond November’s elections. White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is taking his first turn as the Administration’s leading hostage negotiator, and he and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have been schooled on the details of policy [repeatedly](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2020/08/05/you-admit-you-dont-know-what-youre-talking-about-489987) by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell aren’t talking to each other. All the while, millions of Americans are in their first week of sharply reduced safety nets. Meadows, a former House member who was a leader of the burn-it-down Freedom Caucus, signaled he was losing confidence in the potential for a deal before a self-imposed Friday deadline to find a fix. “Is Friday a drop-dead date? No,” he said. “But my optimism continues to diminish the closer we get to Friday, and \[it\] certainly falls off the cliff exponentially after Friday.” Another bludgeon of honesty came during Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s [interview](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/us/politics/mcconnell-stimulus-talks-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) on Wednesday with The New York Times’ chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse. During a conversation between the two Capitol Hill veterans, McConnell offered this blunt assessment as to why he wasn’t part of the negotiations about the next round of pandemic relief unfolding among Pelosi, Schumer, Meadows and Mnuchin: “It eliminates sitting there and having to listen to Pelosi and Schumer’s talking points, which gets in the way of serious discussion.” It takes someone like Hulse to elicit that level of candor from the notoriously sphynx-like McConnell, but, in the [words](https://www.axios.com/trump-coronavirus-under-control-5f114a16-9952-428c-bc07-3cfa360b0977.html) of the President, “It is what it is.” There’s no easy fix to this moment. Washington dysfunction is running high. Distrust among the parties — not to mention between the chambers — is soaring. When lawmakers can’t agree on the fundamental need for postal workers to keep doing their jobs through snow, rain, heat and gloom, that signals a fundamental breakdown in what America expects of its government. When tens of millions of out-of-work Americans are told to trust Washington, that suggests Washington doesn’t see what its actions look like beyond the Beltway. And when voters who don’t have a place to call home come Election Day are asked who should represent them in Washington, don’t count on them to side with the folks who let evictions start up again. It might be time to start recalibrating. _A version of this article first appeared in The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. 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