Tuesday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) discussed the potential forthcoming installment of coronavirus relief from Congress during an interview with Fox News Channel’s Neil Cavuto.
As Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), seek more expenditures in the name of economic relief, Cotton argued that the ultimate goal of congressional Democrat leadership was to remain locked down.
“There’s not really a single deal yet,” he said. “What we have are a series of proposals that will be the starting point for negotiations. As you say, it’s disappointing that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi want to spend another $3 trillion. Remember, the last time we went through this, they tried to waste it on a bunch of their longstanding liberal wish list items, like bailing out the Kennedy Center, or paying off all the post office’s debt.”
“What they want to do is to keep the country locked down,” Cotton continued. “They don’t want children going to schools. They don’t want business to open up. What the Republicans want to do, I think what the country wants to do is get the country opened up, get the economy back on its feet, get people back to work, and get kids back in school in a safe and responsible fashion. We ought to focus on those goals in a very calibrated and targeted fashion.”
Cotton laid out the problem with disbursements and the possibility of incentivizing people not to work.
“We cannot be in a position where we are paying people more not to work and to stay home than to go back to work, especially in those industries that are back open and businesses that are back on their feet,” Cotton said. “So, $600 across the board in March was authorized unanimously in the Senate, because we didn’t know the full scope of the pandemic, what the economic impact would have. That was more of a survival package to make sure families could put food on the table for their kids and keep a roof over their family’s head.”
“So, we cannot be in the situation now, though, that we know so much more about the impact of this virus, where we are paying people not to work,” he added. So, there are various proposals out there. We will see where we end up. But we should not be paying workers more to stay home and not to work when they could be going back to work. I don’t know exactly what it will look like. That should be the goal, though.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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