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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that the White House is proposing a $1 trillion economic stimulus package to battle the pandemic, including $250 billion that would be earmarked for direct payments to Americans.
According to federal officials, the stimulus package has support on each side of the aisle, and they are working quickly to push the legislation through.
“This is a significant economic stimulus plan, and we look forward to having bipartisan support,” Mnuchin said. “We’re now working with the Senate and the House to pass this legislation very quickly.
"It will include payments to small businesses, we talked about loan guarantees to critical industries such as airlines and hotels and we’ve spoken of a stimulus package for the American worker.
“Think of it as business interruption payments,” he added.
If all sides work quickly, checks may be sent in the mail to Americans in the coming weeks, though that may be too late for many who have to make rent and other payments that are due by the beginning of the month.
“Americans need cash now and the president wants to get cash now,” Mnuchin said. “And I mean now in the next two weeks.”
Mnuchin said that he would be reviewing the plans with members of the Senate and the House on Tuesday afternoon, though the hope is that they can accelerate the timeline to get the stimulus package passed expeditiously.
“I think we are going to do something that gets money to them as quickly as possible,” President Donald Trump said. “We will have a pretty good idea at the end of the day what we will be doing.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has been a longtime political sparring partner with the president, said that it’s time for local, state and the federal government to step up to the plate, though he praised Trump being proactive.
“What does government do in this moment? It steps up, it performs, it does what it's supposed to do. It does it better than it's ever done it before,” he said. “What does government not do? It does not engage in politics or partisanship. Even if you are in the midst of an election season. Even if you are in the moment in time in history when you have hyper-partisanship, which we now have.
“We're not Democrats and we're not Republicans. We are Americans at the end of the day. That's who we are and that's who we are when we are at our best so this hyper-sensitivity about politics and reading every comment and wanting to pit one against the other - there is no time for this."
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