Senator Toomey Doesn’t Agree With Relief Bill But Wants The President To Sign It Anyway


Senator Pat Toomey told President Trump to sign the $908 billion coronavirus relief bill into law despite all of its flaws.

Toomey told “The Daily Briefing, “We negotiated the bill, and the president’s people were intimately involved every step of the way. [Treasury] Secretary Steve Mnuchin was arguably one of the most involved people in this whole negotiation.”

The president had been expected to sign the package as soon as it passed the Senate Monday night. Instead, Trump tore the bill apart, calling for Congress to increase the amount given directly to Americans to $2,000 for each individual.

Trump also expressed concern over several provisions put into the 5,593-page bill, part of a cover-all package that stuffs 12 spending measures into one. But the president did not directly say that he would veto the legislation.

Toomey said of the legislation, “There are a lot of provisions I don’t like. There are provisions that the Democrats don’t like. This is what we were able to get to, and my suggestion would be let’s pass this and 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.”

The Pennsylvania Republican told host Dana Perino 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.”

“Consider all the federal employees, millions of people across the country who never lost a dime of income,” Toomey said. “Why would we be sending them $600, much less 2,000? So, if we are not in the same place we were in last March — I was not riled up about the direct payments back in March — but in March, it was a fair question of whether we even had an economy, because governors were so overreacting in terms of shutdowns and doing so much damage, so that took really, really extraordinary and sort of global intervention.

“We are in a very different place in December where we have had a very strong recovery,” he added. “The unemployment rate is half of what it was [in April], and the problems are very acute in certain industries but they are not universal. So, the help should be targeted. This bill, for all its imperfections, that’s what it tries to do.”

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