Pelosi proposes massive state bailout in next spending measure
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats will seek a massive federal cash infusion for struggling state and local governments that would be equivalent to the nearly $700 billion Congress has pumped into struggling businesses that have shut down due to the coronavirus outbreak.
“There will be a bill, and it will be expensive,” the California Democrat told reporters Friday in the U.S. Capitol.
Pelosi told reporters that the size of the state and local government bailout “is probably a number equivalent of what we’ve done for small businesses.”
The House Thursday cleared a $484 billion measure that included $310 billion for programs to help small businesses stay open. The measure is aimed at replenishing a small-business funding package signed into law on March 28 that allocated nearly $350 billion in aid.
The package cleared Thursday also includes $60 billion for economic disaster relief programs.
Democrats are now writing yet another spending bill that has put them on a course to clash with Republicans, who want to slow the federal spigot that has caused the debt to balloon significantly.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has flatly rejected new legislation that would provide billions of dollars that could be used to bail out underfunded pension programs in many states, including New York, Oregon, and Illinois.
McConnell has also warned that Republicans are not as eager to rush through new spending.
But Pelosi said Democrats, who control the House majority, are not going to back down.
“There will not be a bill without state and local” funding, she said.
The March 28 spending measure, which cost $2.2 trillion, allocated $100 billion to state and local governments that have suffered economic losses due to the coronavirus outbreak and government-ordered lockdowns.
Pelosi and Democrats argue that governments will be forced to cut back on firefighters, police, and other essential government workers if they do not receive federal aid.
She accused McConnell and Republicans of “rejecting governance” and compared it to President Trump’s widely ridiculed comments on disinfectants made during Thursday night's press briefing.
“The president is asking people to inject Lysol into their lungs, and Mitch is saying that states should go bankrupt,” Pelosi told reporters. “It's a clear, visible, within 24 hours, of how the Republicans reject science and reject governance. If you don't believe in science and you don't believe in governance, that’s their approach.”
McConnell told the Hugh Hewitt radio program this week that his party will not back the kind of state and local spending Pelosi is planning in the new legislation.
“There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations,” McConnell said. “These are all taxing authorities just like we are, and I think that’s why we need to have a fulsome conference-wide discussion among Senate Republicans before we go down this path.”
McConnell said he would support a change in the law allowing states to declare bankruptcy before greenlighting a federal bailout of underfunded pensions.
Democrats think there are many Republicans who will support legislation to provide more state and local federal aid. And Trump has tweeted his support for providing additional money for state and local governments that have suffered economic losses due to the coronavirus.
Pelosi said Democrats are writing a new spending bill that will include worker protections, “pension support,” additional unemployment insurance, and healthcare funding, among other things. The measure would also provide a $25 billion bailout of the U.S. Postal Service's debt, she said.
Pelosi said Republicans are attempting to privatize the postal services, which she said that “the public should be aware of and reject.”
No comments:
Post a Comment