Schumer: Trump Administration’s Coronavirus Stimulus Just ‘So the President Can Just Give Away Money’

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) defended House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for holding out for a coronavirus relief package larger than the current proposal of the Trump administration, Tuesday on MSNBC’s “All In.”

Anchor Chris Hayes said, “I want to pivot to a policy matter that you may have to take up soon around some kind of rescue package. I will confess that I follow this minutely, and I’m deeply confused about the status of things. The president’s all over the place. Here’s how I understand it. The president is all over the place and doesn’t have the attention span to concentrate on this for more than five minutes. The Mitch McConnell’s caucus hates the idea of passing a big rescue bill. And the House wants one, but the thing I can’t quite understand is it seemed like there was a tentative deal at, say, 1.8 trillion dollars between the White House and Mnuchin and the Speaker. The Speaker was on CNN today, basically saying, like, no, it’s not good enough, and that strikes people as a little nuts. If that were the deal, wouldn’t you all take it?”

Schumer said, “Well, the Speaker is right. First of all, the 1.8 is not really the 1.8 that meets America’s needs. As she said, it contains all sorts of giveaways so the president can just give away money and leaves out huge numbers of things that are needed to help people. The package that the House passed, first, the 3.4 trillion and then when they came down and did the 2.2 trillion, was designed at a bare minimum to meet America’s needs. The 1.8 doesn’t, not just because it’s 1.8 but because the language in it is far worse than what is in the 2.2 and just doesn’t meet America’s needs. Nancy is right to reject it. And they are just playing a game. They’re trying to say a higher number than they originally were without actually changing any of the language.”

He added, “She had asked Mnuchin to give her language on these issues, on the testing issue, so vital in preventing the third Corona wave which you talked about. They don’t get any. And then at the same time, you have this going on. It depends on what day it is to know where Trump is at and where the Republicans are at. Trump today now says go big, and the Republican Senate says go very little or not at all. How do you negotiate?

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