New York Senator and former presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand spoke with Cheddar on Monday about why she joined fellow Democratic lawmakers in opposing the latest $2 trillion stimulus bill.
"The package that Senator [Mitch] McConnell put together did not put workers first, patients first, hospitals first. It literally put corporations first with a slush fund for [Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin] to dole out money in the billions of dollars to whatever companies he wants," she said.
The senator said the stimulus should do more for workers by offering expanded unemployment insurance, national paid leave, national sick leave, and provisions to prevent corporations that get bailed out from paying out bonuses to executives or spending profits on stock buybacks.
She wants to avoid the kind of situation that she says followed the 2008 "Great Recession," in which companies that had been bailed out did not later invest in their employees.
"We want their investments to be worker-driven because that's how you help the economy and help us recover," Gillibrand said.
The lack of funding for hospitals, however, was Gillibrand's biggest criticism of the package.
"It's not fair. These are our first-responders. These are our frontlines in the war against this virus," she emphasized.
The White House budget office says mass firings of federal workers have started in an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues.
President Donald Trump says “there seems to be no reason” to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as part of an upcoming trip to South Korea after China restricted exports of rare earths needed for American industry. The Republican president suggested Friday he was looking at a “massive increase” of import taxes on Chinese products in response to Xi’s moves. Trump says one of the policies the U.S. is calculating is "a massive increase of Tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States." A monthslong calm on Wall Street was shattered, with U.S. stocks falling on the news. The Chinese Embassy in Washington hasn't responded to an Associated Press request for comment.
Most members of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting committee supported further reductions to its key interest rate this year, minutes from last month’s meeting showed.
From Wall Street trading floors to the Federal Reserve to economists sipping coffee in their home offices, the first Friday morning of the month typically brings a quiet hush around 8:30 a.m. eastern, as everyone awaits the Labor Department’s monthly jobs report.
The Supreme Court is allowing Lisa Cook to remain as a Federal Reserve governor for now.
Rep. John Moolenaar has requested an urgent briefing from the White House after Trump supported a deal giving Americans a majority stake in TikTok.
