House speaker Nancy Pelosi beat a retreat Tuesday from the massive coronavirus wish list of Green New Deal projects, immigration measures and other non-virus changes she and fellow Democrats had proposed just hours earlier.
She signaled in several television interviews that her troops would likely accept the deal that will emerge from the Senate, while casting her own 1,404-page bill, with a price tag of $2.5 trillion, as more of a marker for future fights over the direction of American priorities on energy, the work force, elections and immigration.
“The easiest way to do it is for us to put aside some of our concerns for another day, and get this done,” the California Democrat told CNBC.
GOP lawmakers were incensed at Mrs. Pelosi’s legislation, released late Monday night, saying it threatened to undo the progress toward a deal with its focus on issues that went beyond the immediate coronavirus rescue effort.
It would have required airlines receiving bailout money to promise to go carbon-neutral by 2025, revoked several Trump executive orders on unionization within the federal workforce, imposed mandatory nationwide early voting and same-day voter registration, and forgiven $10,000 of student-loan debt across the board.
Also, any company taking coronavirus bailout money would also have to permanently raise their minimum wage to $15 by the start of next year.
...
The bill would automatically renew millions of foreign guest-workers’ work permits. It would also, for the first time, write a specific protection for illegal-immigrant “Dreamers” into law, ordering the Homeland Security secretary to renew hundreds of thousands of DACA permits.