The Trump administration will ask Congress for an economic stimulus of $850 billion to support the economy as the country’s coronavirus response leads to a shutdown of businesses.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is expected to take the request to Capitol Hill on Tuesday, where he will speak with Senate Republicans, according to the Washington Post. He is also likely to urge them to support the House bill passed last week aimed at making testing for the virus more widely available.
The new request calls for billions in general stimulus, including a payroll tax cut that Trump has pushed as of late. Mnuchin hopes the package, aimed in part at small- and medium-sized businesses, can pass by the end of the week. Some $50 billion is also expected to go toward assisting the airline industry directly.
“I think the assumption’s going to be that [if] we’re going to do something, it should be big. Because we can’t assume that we’re just going to keep coming back,” Republican Sen. Marco Rubio said after leaving a meeting with Mnuchin and other administration officials Monday. “We can’t assume that we’re just going to keep coming back.”
The White House has rejected any suggestion of this as a bailout — National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow has called it more of a “short-term liquidity issue.”
Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas have floated another measure aimed at stemming the economic fallout from the virus. On Monday, Romney called for a $1,000 check to “every American adult,” a measure he likened to the action taken by Congress during the 2001 and 2008 recessions. Cotton, who leads the Senate Banking Committee’s subcommittee on economic policy, said legislation he was drafting would give workers and affected families cash stipends “so they can buy food and pay the bills during this crisis.”
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, called on Twitter for a $1,000 check to middle- and low-income earners “ASAP,” saying, “The pressure on family budgets is only going to get worse as we deal with coronavirus.”
