Party leaders racing for an elusive deal on a coronavirus stimulus package claimed more progress on Monday, but the slow, incremental headway appeared far short of the breakthrough needed to get more emergency relief to President Trump‘s desk before Election Day.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the principal negotiators, spoke by phone for almost an hour Monday afternoon, when “they continued to narrow their differences” on policy specifics, according to Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill.

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Yet Pelosi had warned a day earlier that Republican concessions on a national testing strategy, which Mnuchin had delivered Friday, gutted 55 percent of the language demanded by Democrats, including provisions designed to tackle the disproportionate harm the coronavirus has had on minorities. The net effect, Pelosi charged, would be the creation of a “slush fund” empowering the administration to withhold funding intended for coronavirus alleviation.

Read more at The Hill.