GOP senators expect stimulus vote to be Wednesday

Republican senators say they don’t expect a vote on a $2 trillion stimulus package until Wednesday as negotiators continue to refine language in the sprawling bill.

One senior Republican senator said “legislative drafting is going to go late into the night.”

A second lawmaker said the emerging consensus within the Senate GOP conference is that while a miracle might happen and a vote is possible tonight, it’s more likely that it occurs Wednesday.

GOP leaders are giving colleagues guidance that a vote is most likely Wednesday daytime even though some rank-and-file members want to vote after midnight to give employers guidance as quickly as possible about what assistance they can expect from Washington.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have a deal mostly worked out but putting conceptual agreements into legislative text has turned into a time-consuming process.

Schumer told reporters Monday evening “we expect to have a deal in the morning” but by 5 p.m. Tuesday he had yet to announce it was done.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in an MSNBC interview that she expects the Senate to vote Wednesday, although she observed a Tuesday vote would “hasten” getting legislation to President Trump’s desk.

“I don’t know if they can vote today,” she said. “You have to put in legislative language.”

She said “what I was hearing is that there’s one possibility that if they reached agreement today, they would vote tomorrow.”

Pelosi said the precise drafting of language is critical to finalizing a deal.

“It’s one thing to say we agree in principle, it’s another thing to see the language,” she said.