Senate leaders continued this week to work on liability protections for businesses that reopen during the COVID-19 pandemic, after the House’s Democratic majority pushed through a $3-trillion COVID-19 economic relief bill the White House has threatened to veto.
The Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, H.R. 6800, passed the House in a 208-199 vote on May 15. It was an essentially party-line split. Only one Republican, Rep. Peter King (N.Y.), broke ranks to support the majority-authored bill, while almost every House Democrat supported it. At the time, there were 23 non-voters, from both parties, and five vacant seats.
The Senate has refused to take up the House’s bill. On Thursday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the measure a “1,800 page, $3-trillion messaging bill.”
McConnell has said the Senate will only negotiate further COVID-19 relief for states, localities, and businesses once Congress agrees on legal protections for businesses that reopen while the respiratory disease is still spreading. McConell and his colleagues say they want to prevent “trial lawyers” from flooding the courts with lawsuits against businesses that reopen during the pandemic.
“Sen. [John] Cornyn (R-Texas.) and I are working on legal protections … our institutions will need if they want to return to anything resembling normal,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
The House-passed legislation, meanwhile, would provide some protections for federal contractors, including a sort of amnesty for missing deliverables due to the pandemic. The bill would prohibit the federal government from placing missed deliverables in a past performance database to use against contractors in future procurement, so long as the missed deliverables are related to precautions taken to avoid spreading the viral disease.
The legislation also would make clear that any reimbursements contractors seek from the federal government under Section 3610 of the CARES Act, the COVID-19 stimulus bill signed into law in March, can cover not only employee and subcontractor salaries, but also costs associated with keeping those employees and subcontractors “in a ready state.” Section 3610 lets contractors recoup some of the unforeseen costs of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told media this week that she had no red lines in any hypothetical future negotiations with the Senate. However, members of the House Democratic caucus have grumbled that they don’t want to give businesses blanket protection from worker illness and death during the pandemic.
