Conservatives on Twitter accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of holding up a bill aimed at providing coronavirus relief to small businesses because she believes there’s “no data” showing that the “stunt” is needed.
The Democratic leader rejected a small-business relief package from Senate Republicans on Thursday.
“On Tuesday morning, [Treasury] Secretary [Steven] Mnuchin called — that would be two days ago — Secretary Mnuchin called and asked for a quarter of a trillion dollars in 48 hours, with no data, just a quarter of a trillion dollars in 48 hours,” Pelosi said in her weekly press conference. “This morning, [Senate Majority] Leader [Mitch] McConnell honored that request — I say ‘honored,’ really, dishonored the needs that we have — with a stunt on the floor of the Senate, requesting that $250 billion, no data as to why we need it and the rest, when there are outstanding needs we should’ve been doing. And what we offered to do was to sit down and figure out what the numbers are that are needed most urgently.”
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the Senate vote merely a ‘stunt’ as the country faces an ‘epic’ crisis,” the Associated Press reported. “She ridiculed the administration for trying to jam a $250 billion request through Congress with 48 hours notice with little data to back it up.”
“‘Really?’ Pelosi said on a conference call with reporters.”
Conservatives on Twitter immediately pounced on the suggestion that there was a dearth of data to support small businesses needing assistance with companies all across the country shut down by lockdown orders and jobless claims skyrocketing, along with 10% of the workforce being lost in three weeks.
Jobless claims in the United States jumped by 6.6 million this week.
“Nancy Pelosi really just said there’s ‘no data’ suggesting Americans need financial assistance right now,” political strategist Caleb Hull wrote on Twitter.
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Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer have demanded that any $250 billion small-business relief package “would need to include more than $250 billion in extra money for hospitals, state and local governments and food stamp recipients,” according to the Washington Post.
*story by The Washington Examiner