Claim To Fame: Speaker of the House and Senate Minority Leader
Why They're the Liberal Scumbag's of the Week: for playing politics with people's lives and refusing to compromise with the GOP on extending unemployment benefits that just expired July 31:
Meadows told reporters after meeting with Schumer and Pelosi on Thursday that the White House proposals "were not received well." He criticized Democrats for being unwilling to consider the short-term extension.
"I think the Democrats are willing to allow the enhanced unemployment to expire, they made that very clear, not once, not twice, but three times, and so I'm not very optimistic on anybody who's counting on enhanced unemployment, to have any relief anytime soon," Meadows said.
Meadows continued to express frustration with Democrats on Friday, telling reporters that the White House had proposed four options for extending the UI benefits.
"The Democrats are certainly willing today to allow some of the American citizens who are struggling the most under this pandemic to go unprotected," Meadows said.
A source with knowledge of the negotiations told CBS News Meadows initially proposed a simple one-week extension of UI benefits at $600 on Thursday, which Democrats rejected. He then suggested a "skinny proposal," which would have included 4 months of UI benefits at $400, with $105 billion for schools, liability protections, and some unspecified amount for the Paycheck Protection Program. Democrats rejected this as well, believing that McConnell would never come back to the negotiating table to discuss other priorities if he got what he wanted in the skinny package.
At this point, Meadows suggested stripping out the liability provisions so McConnell would be motivated to keep talking, the source said, but Democrats still rejected the proposal. A spokesperson for Meadows denied that he had offered to strip liability protections.With the liberal media on the Democrats side, Schumer and Pelosi know that they'll get little grief from the press on this. More reason why the GOP needs to speak out more on who's really at fault for this.
