On Wednesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Daily Briefing,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) urged President Donald Trump to sign the coronavirus relief bill and then have a debate on additional direct payments and that he is “not a fan of these direct payments. Because the vast majority of the money inevitably goes to people who never had a loss of income.” Toomey also stated that relief must be targeted.
Toomey stated, “Well, the state of play is that we negotiated a bill, and the president’s people were intimately involved every step of the way. Secretary Mnuchin was arguably one of the most involved people in this whole negotiation. There are a lot of provisions I don’t like. There are provisions that Democrats don’t like. This is what we were able to get to, and my suggestion would be let’s pass this, let’s get this signed, let’s get this into law, and we can have an ongoing discussion about whether there should be additional direct payments or not.”
He continued, “My own view is, I’m not a fan of these direct payments. Because the vast majority of the money inevitably goes to people who never had a loss of income. I mean, consider all the federal employees, millions of people across the country, never lost a dime of income. Why would we be sending them $600, much less $2,000?”
Toomey added that “the help should be targeted, and this bill, for all its imperfections, that’s what it tries to do.”
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