McConnell: Dems Trying to ‘Incentivize’ Unemployment in Latest Coronavirus Relief Bill

Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) rejected congressional Democrats’ calls for passage of the HEROES Act, the latest measure promoted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

“Well, we know these are desperate times as a result of the pandemic,” he said. “The CARES Act, which we passed a few — a month or so ago, on a bipartisan basis, only about half of that money has gone out yet. I think there’s a high likelihood we will do another rescue package. But we need to be able to measure the impact of what we have already done, what we did right, what we did wrong, correct that. And we’re not quite ready to intelligently lay down the next step, but it’s not too far off. Let me tell you what it won’t be. It won’t be a $3 trillion left-wing wish list that passed the House that they almost — couldn’t get all the Democrats to vote for, that Senator Schumer is in favor of. That’s not going to pass the Senate. It’s not going to become law.”

“We need to work smart here, help the people who are desperately in need, try to save as many jobs as possible, and begin to open up the states, which are decisions by the governors that are going on all over America now, and get this economy growing again,” McConnell added.

Widely panned by Republicans as a “messaging bill,” McConnell said another drawback of that effort was it incentivized unemployment.

“The problem was, by paying people more not to work than to work, it’s making it difficult to get people back to work,” he explained. “You can understand that. We do need to continue unemployment insurance. It’s extremely important at a time like this. But to pay people more not to work than to work doesn’t encourage resuming your job. And that will end in July. And we think that, in order to create jobs, we need to incentivize people to go back to work, not encourage them to stay home.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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