WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said yesterday he was blocking Democrats’ effort to include funds for the U.S. Postal Service and election infrastructure in a new coronavirus relief bill, a bid to block more Americans from voting by mail during the pandemic.
Congressional Democrats accused Republican Trump of trying to damage the struggling Postal Service to improve his chances of being re-elected as opinion polls show him trailing presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
Trump has been railing against mail-in ballots for months as a possible source of fraud, although millions of Americans – including much of the military – have cast absentee ballots by mail for years without such problems.
Trump said his negotiators have resisted Democrats’ calls for additional money to help prepare for presidential, congressional and local voting during a pandemic that has killed more than 165,000 Americans and presented logistical challenges to organizing as large an event as the Nov. 3 elections.
“The items are the post office and the $3.5 billion for mail-in voting,” Trump told Fox Business Network, saying Democrats want to give the post office $25 billion. “If we don’t make the deal, that means they can’t have the money, that means they can’t have universal mail-in voting.”
Trump later said at a news briefing that if a deal was reached that included postal funding, he would not veto it. The amount of money in question is less than 1% of either party’s current proposed aid package for Americans struggling because of the pandemic. Senate Republicans have floated a $1 trillion response while the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed a $3 trillion bill in May.
The White House negotiating team of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has not met with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in six days.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday said the Republican-controlled Senate was leaving Washington until September, unless there was a coronavirus relief agreement that required a vote.
“I’m still hoping that we’ll have some kind of bipartisan agreement here sometime in the coming weeks,” he told reporters.
