US President Donald Trump is open to compensating hard-hit states for expenses incurred in their Covid-19 responses – but isn’t looking at complete bailouts, his economic adviser said, after Congress was asked to send aid.
“Of course if we go to a phase-four deal, I think President Trump has signaled that, while he doesn’t want to bail out the states, he’s willing to help cover some of the unexpected Covid expenses that might have come their way,” White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told CNN.
In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the federal government is not going to bail out states that were “poorly” managed.
The so-called ‘phase four’ coronavirus-related relief package is currently in the works in Congress, after many businesses across the country were forced to shut down and more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April alone due to the lockdown.
Politicians in states like Illinois and Maryland have urged Congress to send financial aid in order to stabilize the states’ budgets and help their struggling cities. Trump, however, has strongly opposed the idea of bailing out states, arguing that such a step would be unfair to Republicans because “all the states that need help, they’re run by Democrats in every case.”
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