Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are already discussing legislation to assist industries hit hard by the pandemic, adding to the just-advanced bipartisan legislation to help workers in order to confront the economic fallout from the coronavirus.
“The speaker and I are already in conversations about airlines, which is critical to us, hotels, cruise ships, more [Small Business Administration] lending, more liquidity, some type of stimulus,” Mnuchin said in an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.
“I think we’re in the second inning of nine innings, and we will use whatever tools we need,” he said.
Mnuchin and Pelosi just finished negotiating a legislative package to help workers sidelined by the pandemic with paid leave, boosted unemployment insurance, added food stamps, and more. That bill passed the House in the early hours of Saturday morning and is expected to quickly pass the Senate and reach President Trump’s desk.
Pelosi has said that the House will quickly move to another legislative package to address the pandemic.
Airlines have seen a dramatic decrease in customers as travel to the United States has been severely restricted, and public health officials have warned people not to fly unless necessary. Hotels have suffered from mass cancellations. And, at the request of the administration, many cruise lines have curtailed business.
Beyond helping those individual industries, Trump has called for a major stimulus in the form of a giant payroll tax cut. Pelosi has been cool to that specific idea. But Congress is under pressure from outside experts to quickly approve some form of assistance to households to stave off an unnecessary collapse in demand for goods and services beyond the short-term effects of the pandemic.
