McCarthy on Coronavirus Relief Bill: ‘We’ll Have a Debate and Then We’ll Have a Voice Vote’

Thursday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) predicted the House would pass the coronavirus relief legislation passed by the Senate a night earlier, but he said it would come with debate first.

McCarthy told Fox News there was time wasted by Democrats but insisted tomorrow the House would act, hold a voice vote and move the legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk.

“I believe the House will pass this bill,” he said. “We want to make sure we’re able to read it. The final text did not come out until last night. Remember the size and the scope of how much money this is. So we will take the opportunity to read through it today. We will vote on Friday, tomorrow, in the morning. But the floor will look different. Remember where we are today. We have a number of members who have the virus on both sides of the aisle. We have a number of members who are quarantined. We have challenges for flying here because some flights are being canceled. So you might now have the full body, but you want to make sure you have the debate, and those constituents have their voices.”

“It will pass, but this time, not with unanimous consent with no debate,” McCarthy continued. “We’ll have a debate, and then we’ll have a voice vote to bring it up and move it to the president’s desk. Unfortunately, we have wasted this entire week because the Democrats wanted to put in their election law changes, bailout pensions, put the Green New Deal. We were able to keep that out, but they did put some more funding for things that don’t deal with coronavirus. But we will still get this package that is needed for the hospitals, for the small businesses to keep people employed. That’s the key part here. And every day matters, so we want to get this done quickly.”

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