⁍ White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Sunday he was not optimistic on reaching agreement soon.

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⁍ Lawmakers and the White House have been unable to reach an accord for a next round of economic relief from a pandemic.

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⁍ Pelosi stood firm in her demand that Congress renew the $600 per week jobless aid.

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– “He’s the one standing in the way,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said of President Trump on Sunday when asked about efforts to renew the expired emergency federal jobless benefits. The benefits for the long-term unemployed expired on Friday, and Pelosi reiterated her demand that Congress renew them for $600 a week. “As that goes down, then you can consider something less than the $600, but in this agreement it’s $600,” she told ABC’s This Week, per Reuters. “It’s essential for America’s working families.” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, meanwhile, said on the same show that the White House is “absolutely” in favor of longer-term unemployment benefits, but that they should be tied to wages. “We want to fix the issue where in some cases people are overpaid and we want to make sure there’s the right incentives,” he said, but “we have to be careful about not piling on enormous amount of debts for future generation.” Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, meanwhile, said on CBS’ Face the Nation that he was not optimistic on reaching agreement soon on a deal for a next round of legislation to provide relief to Americans hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. “I’m not optimistic that there will be a solution in the very near term,” Meadows said. “We continue to see really a stonewalling of any piecemeal type of legislation that happens on Capitol Hill. Hopefully that will change in the coming days.”