Pelosi: ‘If We Want to Open up the Economy,’ ‘We Need to Defeat the Virus’

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) touted the Heroes Act and said that “If we want to open up the economy, and we all do, we need to defeat the virus, and that’s testing, tracing, treatment, and isolation.”

Pelosi said, “Well, first of all, let me just say that the Heroes Act is an answer, in many ways, to the challenge that our economy faces. If we want to open up the economy, and we all do, we need to defeat the virus, and that’s testing, tracing, treatment, and isolation. And we don’t have a vaccine and we don’t have a cure, but we do have a method to defeat the vaccine – excuse me, the virus. And we have to do that. So, that’s one way to open the economy.”

She continued, “The other way is to honor our heroes. Let’s keep these people working. The money that we’re putting into state and local governments to pay our healthcare workers, our first responders, our sanitation, transportation, teachers, and the rest are keeping people working. Otherwise, the states will have to fire some and raise taxes or some combination thereof. So, this is about the economy. It’s about stimulus. And the third is putting money in people’s pockets.”

Pelosi later added that she wants to see money spent “to bolster the working families in America who have lost their jobs because of no fault of their own, whom [the] virus is debilitating in terms of getting the economy moving again, until we test, trace, treat, and isolate, as we wear our masks.”

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