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Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she’s still hoping to clinch a massive coronavirus relief deal with the White House before the end of the year, despite predicting a sweeping Joe Biden victory next week that could deliver Democrats control of Washington in January. “I feel very confident that Joe Biden will be elected president on Tuesday,” Pelosi told reporters at her last weekly press conference before the Nov. 3 election. “We want to have as clean a slate as possible going into January.” (Caygle and Ferris, 10/29)

The major players in Washington’s COVID-19 relief blame game lobbed familiar volleys on Thursday, marking time in the days before an election that promises to change the landscape for talks that have dragged on for months without producing results. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a scolding assessment, blaming Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for failing to produce answers to her demands for Democratic priorities as part of the approximately $2 trillion aid package. President Donald Trump again promised “a very big package as soon as the election is over” and faulted Pelosi for the pre-election standoff that has rattled markets and shows, at least for now, no signs of easing. (Taylor, 10/30)

A new phase of the economic crisis is looming for the winner of Tuesday’s presidential election: potentially massive defaults by jobless Americans on consumer loans as the chances for more federal relief this year diminish. (Guida, 10/29)

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday said the federal government is failing to react appropriately to surging coronavirus cases around the country because President Trump is “a moron.” “More people are in hospitals, more people are dying. This third wave in the cold weather with the combination of the flu, and we're sitting on our hands and that's because Donald Trump is such a — pardon my saying, I know you have a very nice show — such a moron,” Schumer told SiriusXM’s “The Joe Madison Show.” (Bolton, 10/29)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is preparing a 2021 legislative agenda with two “great, big initiatives” — expanding health care access and rebuilding American infrastructure — that are longtime Democratic priorities aligned with Joe Biden’s platform and taking on fresh urgency in the COVID-19 crisis. Pelosi said the bills, from the party’s own top 10-list of legislation that has already passed the Democratic House this session of Congress, “fit comfortably” with what Biden is proposing in his “Build Back Better” platform. They are bills that “we will pass again in a new Congress,” she said. (Mascaro, 10/29)

KHN: If They Sweep On Election Day, Dems Still Face A Challenge Meeting Health Promises 

Democrats are favored to win both chambers of Congress after years of campaign-trail promises about health care. But with a pandemic, a more conservative Supreme Court and lingering disagreements between progressives and moderates, it could be difficult for Democrats to turn those promises into law. In the final days of the campaign, COVID-19 and the threat posed to the Affordable Care Act and Roe v. Wade by the court’s bolstered conservative majority are consuming congressional Democrats — right down to keeping them in Washington well after they would usually go home to campaign. (Huetteman, 10/30)

KHN: Democrats Link GOP Challengers To Trump’s COVID Record, Efforts To Undo Obamacare 

In a tweet to his 78,000 followers Sunday, U.S. Rep. Harley Rouda, a Democrat from Orange County, California, described his Republican opponent Michelle Steel’s attendance at an indoor fundraiser without a mask as “sickening.” Democratic U.S. Rep. Gil Cisneros also blasted his Republican opponent, Young Kim, on Twitter for attending the “superspreader fundraiser,” calling it a “slap in the face to frontline workers” and his constituents in southern Los Angeles County and northern Orange County. (Young, 10/30)

KHN: ‘It’s Science, Stupid’: A School Subject Emerges As A Hot-Button Political Issue

At the top of Dr. Hiral Tipirneni’s to-do list if she wins her congressional race: work with other elected officials to encourage mask mandates and to beef up COVID-19 testing and contact tracing. Those choices are backed up by science, said Tipirneni, an emergency room physician running for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District. On the campaign trail, she has called on her opponent, Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), to denounce President Donald Trump’s gathering of thousands for a rally in Arizona and his comments about slowing down COVID-19 testing. (Knight, 10/30)