House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to meet with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday as a self-imposed deadline looms for a deal worth about $2 trillion.
The two top negotiators have been making progress but are still apart on a sprawling deal that Pelosi says must be done by Tuesday if anything is going to happen before Election Day.
One elephant in the room is President Donald Trump. The president first ordered talks scrapped but has recently ordered Mnuchin to come up with a bigger relief plan than Pelosi.
Another potential obstacle is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who says he won't consider a deal worth anything even close to that amount.
Pelosi has been holding out for a bigger package for weeks now as the White House has slowly given ground.
The two sides are still far apart on issues such as funding for hard-hit states and local governments and a GOP push to eliminate liability for companies that reopen amid the pandemic. Democrats deride that plan as absolving big business from putting workers and customers in danger.
Democratic leaders believe they have maximum leverage because Trump is hungry for a deal that could give him something to tout to voters in the closing days of the presidential election campaign.
But Pelosi is also under pressure from Democratic lawmakers to take yes for an answer as Trump has already caved on the overall price tag for the package.
If Pelosi and Mnuchin can cut a deal, it would put McConnell on the hot seat and might expose serious rifts on the GOP side.
McConnell plans to push through a much smaller $500 billion package this week and says he won't go higher than that.
Trump says he can pressure GOP senators to accept any package that he agrees to. But with Trump and several GOP incumbent senators trailing in polls, it remains to be seen whether that's really the case.
