One person involved told CNN last night: "We're in different universes right now."
The weekly $600 federal unemployment enhancement expires in 48 hours.
Bottom line: Contrary to where things currently sit, there are solutions here. People involved in the talks -- most of whom are veterans of a half-dozen or more extremely high stakes deadline negotiations -- acknowledge there are deal points here that can be reached. But they also make clear neither side is anywhere near moving towards those points at the moment.
What to watch: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will return to the Capitol Wednesday to meet again with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, emerging from a more than hour-long meeting with the top White House negotiators, said the message Democrats have received is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell "really doesn't want to get an agreement made."
Pelosi was responding to McConnell's insistence that he is unwilling to negotiate on the draft liability protections proposal that Senate Republicans introduced on Monday.
McConnell, in an interview on CNBC on Tuesday, said Republicans are "not negotiating over liability protections."
Pelosi described the meeting with Meadows and Mnuchin as an effort at "airing our differences. There's discovery and understanding on where there might be opportunity or not."
Mnuchin, on his way to McConnell's office, said conversations are ongoing, but "we still have a lot work to do on where we are."
Meadows, asked if negotiators were getting closer, responded: "I don't know that I would characterize it as getting closer."
Major sticking points: Talks are still at their topline stages, but Democrats aren't budging on the $600 federal unemployment enhancement, nor the nearly $1 trillion for state and local funding. McConnell has made his position known on liability. And while those are the big picture issues, as one person involved put it: "We haven't really even gotten to the granular stuff yet."
How things are really going
Pelosi and Schumer requested Mnuchin and Meadows ask McConnell if he was serious about not being willing to negotiate on the liability protections proposal. Pelosi's office is a couple hundred feet away from McConnell's, just across the Rotunda. As far as we're aware, both leaders also have telephones. This is, to be sure, not a great sign of the current dynamics.
Also not great: Meadows has shifted from football to baseball metaphors in describing where talks stand. One problem: baseball games can technically go on -- forever, so long as nobody has more runs after the bottom of an inning. At least with football the field is firmly 100 yards. Meadows said talks are currently in the second inning. He did not specify whether he expected this to be a nine-inning, or extra innings, affair.
The negotiating dynamics
McConnell, at his weekly press conference, ma
