McConnell backs fourth relief package that targets stopping the virus

Published April 3, 2020 10:12pm ET



Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he supports Congress and President Trump enacting a new coronavirus relief package that focuses on health care, a senior Republican aide told the Washington Examiner Friday.

The news was first reported by the Associated Press.

“There will be a next measure,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, told the AP.

McConnell said the next measure, “should be more a targeted response to what we got wrong and what we didn’t do enough for — and at the top of the list there would have to be the health care part of it.”

Congress last month passed three major coronavirus response packages, the last one a $2.2 trillion measure President Trump signed into law on March 28.

The House and Senate are not in session due to the coronavirus but lawmakers are plotting next legislative steps.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she will endorse a bill that builds on the $2.2 trillion measure, which provides direct cash payments, loans and grants to businesses, enhanced unemployment insurance and money to help state and local governments treat the virus.

Pelosi wants the measure to include a bailout of struggling union pensions, a debt payoff for the U.S. Postal Service and new health and safety requirement for workers.

Pelosi, a California Democrat, wants to move fairly quickly in drafting a new bill, but McConnell has said he wants to wait until the $2.2 trillion measure is administered to determine what is needed next.

McConnell told the AP on Friday he is “not in favor or rushing” to pass a fourth relief package but the next measure should be focused on stopping the virus.

“We’ve got to wipe this out and we’ve got to wipe it out in warp speed,” McConnell told the AP. “And so I would put that at the top of the list of places we need to look and see what could we have done better in the previous bill, the $2.2 trillion.”

McConnell added, “We can’t sustain economically this happening again. We’ve got to solve the health part of it, which means not only treatment but vaccines.”