Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar told Cheddar on Tuesday that Americans need cash from canceled flights to provide immediate relief, but airline executives have not responded to the call.
In a letter to 11 major airlines, nine Democratic senators, including Klobuchar, wrote "we believe your company has a moral responsibility to provide real refunds, not travel vouchers, to consumers, and to support State Department efforts to repatriate any American citizens trying to come home."
"We're waiting to hear back from them," Sen. Klobuchar said. "Obviously many of them have canceled fees and other things. Or they have proposed to give customers the ability to use it to buy another ticket in the future."
But with Congressional help, those senators think money should go back into the pockets of customers.
Klobuchar said "we think it is much more important to get the cash to the customer knowing that they're going to fly again when this is over" than to provide credits for travelers.
Last week, Congress passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package that includes $25 billion in cash grants and $25 billion in loans to the airlines.
Her Democratic colleague Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote on Twitter "the airline industry got $25 billion to keep workers on payroll — but they're not the only ones hurting for money right now."
American Airlines said in a response that the "comprehensive travel waivers we've put in place are designed to meet the full range of our customers' needs."
The global bottled water industry is booming, and it's coming at a steep environmental cost, according to the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health.
Sanofi has announced that it will lower the list price of its insulin drug, Lantus, by 78 percent and will set a $35 cap on out-of-pocket costs for all patients.
Eleven of the biggest U.S. banks Thursday announced a $30 billion rescue package for First Republic Bank in an effort to prevent it from becoming the third to fail in less than a week and head off a broader banking crisis.
A total of 33 states and the District of Columbia now allow at least some form of sports wagering, but the prospects are mixed for expanding sports betting to additional states this year.
Neel Shah and Caitlin Kelly describe how their company EZ Newswire fared following Silicon Valley Bank's stunning collapse as other banks are feared to be in similar precarious states.
This photo taken on Feb. 24, 2023 shows a XPeng X2 flying car at the headquarters of XPeng Aeroht in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province. Guangzhou, one of China's major car manufacturing bases, has been striving to attract investment in new energy vehicle NEV industry in recent years.
Tom Graff, head of investments with Facet Wealth, joined Cheddar News to discuss what investors should know about the stock market amid concerns about the banking sector.
