It's Brian Lehrer, and this is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios.

It's Thursday, May 7th.

So negotiations are underway in the press, and maybe even between the leaders in Washington

themselves over the next relief package.

One of the main tensions, as we've been discussing here in recent days, is between cities like

New York and Chicago that feel they have tremendous financial problems being caused by

emergency virus spending and plummeting tax revenues at the same time that only the federal

government is big enough to help the meet, cities on the one side. And Senate Majority Leader

Mitch McConnell and President Trump on the other who are resisting what they call blue state

bailouts. Trump wants a payroll tax cut. McConnell wants businesses that reopen,

protected from lawsuits. Here is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on CNN with Wolf Blitzer this week,

one of her latest acts of Donald Trump management, as she sees it, making the city's case as part of

her blueprint for the next bill. We didn't just start this bill yesterday.

This bill was what we were in the works with with CARES 1.

They did 150 for state and local.

It wasn't enough.

We're continuing that.

And we did testing in our first bill, March 4th and then testing last week, but we need more for that.

So if the president says, if not a speaker, excuse me for interrupting you, if the president says you could March 4th and then testing last week, but we need more for that. So all of this are things that are agreed.

Excuse me for interrupting you.

If the president says you could get most of what you want, but he wants a payroll tax cut,

otherwise he's not going to sign it into law.

...