The Club for Growth and FreedomWorks will score votes on incoming coronavirus relief legislation pushed by Democrats, with the grades determining how much support representatives and senators will receive from the conservative advocacy groups’ arsenals.
While impeachment politics and attitudes about former President Donald Trump dominate discussion about the Republican Party’s direction, the coronavirus legislation is set to be the first major test of GOP policymakers’ mettle since Mr. Trump exited the White House.
The early grades from the influential conservative groups will reveal how much government-spending policies matter to the future of the GOP, and will play a role in determining whether representatives and senators land endorsements and financial support for their next campaigns.
The Club for Growth, the economy-minded group that zealously supported Mr. Trump’s reelection, told The Washington Times it intends to issue a key vote alert urging members to vote against a coronavirus relief package in the House and Senate.
The Club opposes any package advanced through fast-track procedures known as reconciliation or that carries President Biden’s desired $1.9 trillion price tag. The group also wants Congress to prevent raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, $1,400 stimulus checks distributed to Americans, extending the federal unemployment expansion, and funding for state and local governments and education officials that keep schools closed or have behaved in a way that the Club deems irresponsible.
FreedomWorks shares many of the Club’s concerns but is primarily fretting the stimulus checks to taxpayers, hiking the minimum wage, and anything that the conservative group views as “federalizing” the government’s coronavirus response or bailing out blue states.
Conservatives have hardly any leverage to get everything they want removed from the coronavirus relief package. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats stood ready to advance the coronavirus legislation regardless of Republicans’ wishes.
The New York Democrat said on the Senate floor he would not suffer “timidity or delay.”
“The Senate is going to press forward on another COVID relief bill. We want to work with our Republican colleagues to advance this legislation in a bipartisan way, but the work must move forward,” Mr. Schumer said. “Preferably with our Republican colleagues, but without them if we must.”
