On Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked airlines to hold off on laying off more workers as stimulus was ‘being advanced’ to the industry. This comes as the Democrats saw their $2.2 trillion dollar package under the Heroes Act pass the House and President Trump tests positive for coronavirus. Yahoo Finance’s Jess Smith joins The Final Round to discuss the latest from Washington D.C.
Video Transcript
MYLES UDLAND: With all this going on down in DC today, you may have forgotten that there are some developments on the stimulus front, although things still not looking super constructive for getting a deal passed. Joining us now with the latest on that is Jessica Smith in the capitol. Jess?
JESSICA SMITH: Yeah, Myles, negotiations between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Treasury secretary. Steven Mnuchin continued today. Today, they had a phone call that lasted more than an hour. But they are still pretty far apart on some big issues. So it doesn’t look like a deal is happening at the moment.
We know that there are several areas where they still disagree, because Speaker Pelosi sent a letter to her Democratic colleagues today outlining those areas. Some of them include unemployment insurance, schools, state and local funding, the child tax credit, testing, and tracing. So still a lot of work to be done to get this deal done sometime before the election. Lawmakers are leaving Washington now. Of course, they can be called back at any time. So we’ll see what happens there.
One big development that Jared was mentioning was this news on the airlines. Speaker Pelosi did put out a statement today, urging airlines to hold off on layoffs. She said in a statement “the massive furloughs and firings of America’s airline workers jeopardize the livelihoods of tens of thousands and threaten to accelerate the devastating economic crisis facing our nation.” Now, she called relief for the airlines imminent.
And she did say that she would consider a standalone bill, which is very different than what we’ve heard in the past, because she has said she doesn’t want to do this piece by piece. She wants to do this all at once. House Democrats did try to advance an airline bill today by unanimous consent, but that bill did not move forward. They were not able to get unanimous consent for it. So we’ll be watching over the weekend if Mnuchin, and Pelosi continue to talk to see if there are any updates on Monday.
MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and it’s just– it’s just surprising, Jess, because we spoke with you, I think it was maybe Monday or Tuesday. And you’re like, look, nothing I’m hearing from anybody suggests that a bill is going to get done before the election. And the markets decided, I guess Wednesday, that it was– like it was imminent.
But here we are, sort of status quo on that. And, as you mentioned, folks going home. And they can be called back, but it seems like a stretch.
And now, of course, with everything else going on in DC, with the president testing positive for COVID, the first lady testing positive for COVID, I guess I would just ask kind of the impression that you’re getting from your contacts in the capitol as it relates to this news? Because it kind of– I don’t really know what to make of it, other than it is shocking. And in some ways, it seemed like it was inevitable, given the travel schedule, the events, and so on that we would end up here.
JESSICA SMITH: Right, 32 days before the election, just a little over a month before the election, the President of the United States has COVID-19. And now there is this anxiety of trying to figure out who has been exposed, who needs to be tested, who needs to be isolated. Chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters today that President Trump is experiencing mild symptoms. We know he and the first lady are isolating in the White House, that now– right now, the Trump campaign has decided to postpone or make all campaign events that the president was supposed to be involved in virtual.
We know that Vice President Biden has been tested. Of course, he shared the debate stage with President Trump earlier this week. He has been tested. The campaign says that he was negative. But, as Anjalee can explain far better than I can, just because you’re tested negative today doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods yet.
Other high-level officials are being tested. We know the Vice [AUDIO OUT] Pence, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have all tested negative. The Supreme Court nominee, Judge Barrett, is tested daily, the White House tells me. They say that she has tested negative. But she has been on the Hill meeting with a lot of senators, including one who has now tested positive.
So there is just a lot of contact tracing work to be done, a lot of questions that are still unanswered here. We are waiting to hear Speaker Pelosi’s test results. So a lot of questions that people still have about this as they try to do some contact tracing and figure out what needs to come next.
