Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said during a March 17 news conference that the chamber will vote on the House-passed Families First Coronavirus Response Act (H.R. 6201) — the second congressional bill to address the crisis — as soon as it can get permission from all members to do so and intends to demonstrate that Congress can operate on a bipartisan basis.

Regarding a third package, Senator McConnell said — following a meeting among members and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin — that Republicans are examining policy tools to put money directly and quickly into the hands of Americans and to help businesses. They are establishing three task forces to come up with what should be included in the next bill. McConnell said other senators are to funnel ideas for the next bill through the task forces and he is adopting this format because it is a "Herculean task" to craft a bill of this magnitude with 53 GOP Senators.

"We are working on trying to deal with this public health crisis, which we are trying to bend the curve on quickly, and anything that addresses that, small businesses and individuals on a short-term basis, we hope we will begin to bend the curve and get back to normal because the underlying economy before all this came along was in very good shape," he said.

Senator McConnell said Republicans will eventually negotiate a package with Democrats and will not leave Washington until they have constructed and passed another bill on "Phase 3." He said the chamber will move quickly. "We are going to move here in warp speed — for the Senate, which almost never does anything quickly," he said.

Meanwhile, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) circulated a slide deck outlining priorities for COVID-19 response, calling for a $750 billion split between $400 billion in appropriations and $350 billion toward the social safety net.

Specifically, appropriations funding would focus on areas like:

• Medical surge, i.e. hospital beds, ventilators, etc.
• Childcare funding, especially for health care workers
• Small-business loans and loan forgiveness
• Seniors' food and housing needs
• Public housing assistance
• Protections for children whose schools are closed
• Public transportation relief, i.e. for continued operations until regular ridership resumes
• State and local relief
• "Resilient" infrastructure like broadband

Safety net priorities include:

• Unemployment insurance expansion
• Medicaid, including an increase in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage
• Food assistance increases
• Student debt relief

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