The fight over an economic relief package appeared to be coming into focus. Last week, a bipartisan group of relative Senate centrists came to terms on a $908 billion package, which Democratic leaders grudgingly endorsed as the basis for detailed negotiations. Optimism on Capitol Hill reached new heights as the contours of a deal took shape.

Yesterday, however, things got a little more complicated.

In recent days, there’s been growing support for including direct aid payments to individual households — along the lines of the checks that were sent in the spring as part of the CARES Act — which was a popular idea left out of the bipartisan centrists’ blueprint last week. It was against this backdrop that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin unveiled a new $916 billion package.

The good news is that it includes state aid — $160 billion, just like the centrists’ plan — and direct-aid checks, worth $600 per person. The bad news is, the Trump administration’s new offer would dramatically scale back unemployment benefits, while the bipartisan plan would extend a $300 weekly federal supplement to the unemployed for four months.

There’s no way Democrats would ever accept such an agreement, and the party’s leadership quickly rejected Mnuchin’s proposal last night.

That said, the elements in play matter. There are a confusing number of blueprints making the rounds, but they all roughly carry the same price tag, and there’s at least some Republican support for key Democratic priorities. There’s even growing bipartisan support for direct-aid checks, which most Dems want. So why hasn’t there been a breakthrough?

Largely because of one unshakable GOP priority. A Washington Post analysis explained late yesterday:

As Congress gets closer than it has in months to a bipartisan coronavirus relief bill, one issue that has quietly stopped other compromises could, my colleagues report, collapse this one, too: Should businesses be shielded from lawsuits by employees and customers for reopening during the pandemic? Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), say the issue of legal protections for businesses from lawsuits is a “red line” for them.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) added that over the last week, McConnell has balked at moving forward with a bipartisan agreement “unless it wipes away all COVID-related lawsuits filed that ‘allege injury or death’ due to corporate negligence.”

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The congresswoman went on to explain, “These lawsuits represent the worst of the worst examples of disregard for human life — cases filed on behalf of nursing home patients and grocery store workers who died because the company in charge of keeping them safe prioritized cutting costs over protecting them. The same McConnell who said that President Trump is ‘100% within his rights’ to pursue baseless lawsuits alleging election fraud is now refusing to pass urgently-needed relief unless it strips those same rights from the most vulnerable among us.”

For his part, the Kentucky Republican made a new offer of his own yesterday, telling Democrats he’ll punt on a corporate liability shield if they punt on aid to states to prevent job losses. Not surprisingly, Dems dismissed this as a possibility.

No one seems to know how, or whether, this will come to a resolution. There are some liability protections from federal lawsuits in the bipartisan agreement, but McConnell said they don’t go far enough: he wants a multi-year corporate shield that protects businesses from state and local lawsuits, too.

Remember, for McConnell, this is a “red line” issue.

The process will continue for at least another week: the original deadline for a comprehensive package, resolving pandemic relief and the looming government shutdown was Friday, Dec. 11. Lawmakers agreed this week to a stopgap measure that pushes that deadline until Friday, Dec. 18.