Talks between Democrats and administration officials over the details of another coronavirus relief package stalled earlier this month and have remained in a political stalemate, with negotiators unable to reach an agreement on the overall scope and price tag of the package.
The $3.4 trillion legislation approved by House Democrats in May included $15.75 billion in grants for transit agencies, while the $1 trillion offer introduced by Senate Republicans last month did not include a similar allocation in aid. It was unclear how much of that would go to the M.T.A.
A spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader and a New York Democrat, said that the Senator is fighting for robust funding for the transit authority in the current round of negotiations. In March, Democratic leaders successfully secured $3.9 billion for the M.T.A. in the first federal stimulus package.
Without funding, though, transit advocates warned that riders would feel the effects of the proposed cuts for decades.
“Something like this, it would fundamentally change New York,” said Nick Sifuentes, the executive director of Tri-State Transportation Campaign, an advocacy group. “It would kick off the death spiral of people using anything other than public transit and then transit funding would never recover.”
The Transport Workers Union Local 100, which represents many M.T.A. workers, also decried the possibility of slashing the work force.
“Transit workers put this city and state on their backs and carried them through the deadly pandemic, risking their own health and lives,” the union’s president, Tony Utano, said in a statement. “Layoffs would be an unimaginable shameful betrayal.”