Minority Whip Steve Scalise joined Newell on WWL Tuesday morning to discuss the Federal government’s role in economic relief for states whose budgets are imploding amid the coronavirus crisis.“The rhetoric in Washington DC seems to be heating up on a number of issues,” Newell began. “Obviously, this Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) plan got delayed, and you issued a press release saying that it should have passed weeks ago, knowing it was going to be oversubscribed. And yet, we got into a tit-for-tat situation between Republicans and Democrats. What happened?”
“The good news is that cooler heads prevailed and we were able to get the bill passed,” Scalise said. “We got the additional money for PPP and some additional money for hospitals that we were working on, and these have been very bipartisan. The parts where we disagree get a lot of attention, but there are still a few people up there who are going by the old-school way of doing things, which is anytime you have a crisis, there are some people who think that whatever pet projects you have that can’t get passed on their own, you just wait until the midnight hour on some must-do bill and jam it on. We’re not playing that game right now. We have to focus on helping people with their health, safety and economic security. When you talk about what the PPP has done, that’s been a lifeline for small businesses. And for millions of people who want to have a job to go back to whenever we safely open the economy, if you just keep this going on open-ended, there are a lot of businesses that won’t come back. We want to focus and health and safety, but we want to have economic security too. You can do both, and you have to do both.”
“So what are the next steps for Congress now?” Newell continued. “There’s any number of identified needs throughout the country. How do you go about strategically trying to meet those needs?”“We just passed a bill that puts another $480-plus billion out into the economy. That’s a lot of money and there are real concerns about spending in general when you talk about trillions going out, but there’s also a recognition that this is something we just had to do,” Scalise answered. “It’s unique, what we are dealing with. We want to make sure the money is being spent properly… I was talking to Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, and they’ve been working on putting as money guardrails as you can around this program so you can have confidence that people who shouldn’t be getting money aren’t getting it. You saw a lot made of some companies like Ruth’s Chris Steak House, and even Harvard University that gave their money back. How do we have a program this big that works effectively for the taxpayers?”
“We’re working with hospitals to make sure they’re getting the relief money they need,” Scalise continued. “I’ve been working with New Orleans-area hospitals on the next round of funding. We were an early hotspot and there were extra costs associated with that, and we want to make sure we can get our hospitals flushed up again. We want to make sure they’ve got the PPE they need.”
