A show vote in the Senate reflected a continuing partisan divide that appears increasingly likely to scuttle any recovery package to address the toll of the pandemic before the November election.

By Emily Cochrane & Jim Tankersly @ NYTimes.com, Sept. 10

WASHINGTON — Prospects for any additional stimulus to address the coronavirus pandemic’s devastating toll before the election darkened considerably on Thursday, when a whittled-down Republican plan failed in the Senate on a partisan vote.

Democrats voted unanimously to block the proposal from advancing, calling it inadequate to meet the mounting needs for federal aid, in the latest indication of a lack of political will to reach an agreement, even as critical federal aid for individuals and businesses has run dry.

It was a nearly party-line vote whose outcome was never in doubt. The proposal amounted to a fraction of the $1 trillion plan Republicans had offered in negotiations with Democrats, who in turn are demanding more than twice as much.

A failure to compromise would leave millions of jobless Americans in potentially dire straits, as they exhaust traditional jobless benefits and states run out of additional funds that President Trump steered to the unemployed by executive order last month. It would also strand a wide swath of small business owners who have endured steep drops in revenue as the pandemic chilled economic activity, with little prospect of a return to normal levels for months to come [....]