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GOP Leaders Head to White House as Virus Crisis Deepens

Associated Press

   WASHINGTON - Top Republicans in Congress are expected to meet Monday
   with President Donald Trump at the White House on the next COVID-19 aid
   package as the crisis many hoped would have improved has dramatically
   worsened, just as emergency relief is expiring.
   New divisions between the Senate GOP majority and the White House posed
   fresh challenges. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was prepared
   to roll out the $1 trillion package in a matter of days. But the
   administration panned more virus testing money and interjected other
   priorities that could complicate quick passage.
   "We have to end this virus," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said
   Monday on MSNBC.
   Pelosi said any attempt by the White House to block testing money "goes
   beyond ignorance."
   Lawmakers were returning to a Capitol still off-limits to tourists,
   another sign of the nation's difficulty containing the coronavirus.
   Rather than easing, the pandemic's devastating cycle was happening all
   over again, leaving Congress little choice but to engineer another
   costly rescue.
   Businesses were shutting down again, schools could not fully reopen and
   jobs were disappearing, all while federal aid expired.
   Without a successful federal strategy, lawmakers are trying to draft
   one.
   Trump insisted again Sunday that the virus would "disappear," but the
   president's view did not at all match projections from the leading
   health professionals straining to halt the alarming U.S. caseload and
   death toll.

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